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As the Indian summer gets underway, the excitement among cricket fans in the country is also on the rise as the new season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is set to begin later this month.
Bet here on India vs England and other cricket matches!
The fixtures for the 2024 season were released last week, with the first 21 matches being finalised. The opening game will see defending champions Chennai Super Kings take on Royal Challengers Bangalore at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.
CSK CEO reveals how ‘Thala’ was picked in the IPL 2008 auction
As five-time winners of the IPL, CSK has been a massively popular franchise since its inception. Adding to this is the fact that former Indian captain MS Dhoni has become the face of the team, and since his international retirement plays only in the IPL.
In a chat with former India and CSK player Subramaniam Badrinath, CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan illustrated how the wicketkeeper was picked in the IPL 2008 auction. He said,
There were icon players when we started. There were Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, all of them [going elsewhere]. But for Chennai, sir [N Srinivasan] was not at all worried. VB [Chandrasekhar] was our selector, and he only one thing to him.
He had some function on that day and could not come on time. So he said, “Look VB, before I come, you should have taken MS Dhoni, Mutthiah Muralitharan and [Matthew] Hayden.” At that time nobody knew that Dhoni would become such a big player. But that credit should go to VB also.
The auction for the 2008 IPL season took place in February 2008. Indian stars Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag were icon players for their respective home franchises.
Dhoni, who had led India to T20 World Cup victory in 2007, became the most expensive player at that auction as CSK secured his signature for $1.5 million, over three times his base price of $400,000. The franchise also signed Mutthiah Muralitharan for $600,000 and Matthew Hayden for $375,000.
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