CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan has responded to the rumours of Rishabh Pant coming to Chennai during the IPL 2025 auction. Pant will be one of the big players in demand during the auction, which will take place on November 24 and 25.
Pant was allowed to leave DC, bringing an end to a 9-year association with the franchise. Many have linked Pant to come in and become the natural successor to the great MS Dhoni and now Viswanathan has responded to the matter. Speaking to Ambati Rayudu on Provoke TV, the CSK CEO said that they had talks with captain Ruturaj Gaikwad, Dhoni and Stephen Fleming about the players they wanted to retain and the common decision was to retain the players who stabilised the team in the previous editions.
CSK went on to retain Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ravindra Jadeja, Matheesha Pathirana, Shivam Dube and MS Dhoni as an ‘uncapped’ player.
“We had discussions with Ruturaj, the captain, MS (Dhoni) and coach Stephen Fleming before we decided on the retentions. We were very clear that the players that helped the team grow, stabilise in the previous years were the ones very important for the CSK team to continue further,” Viswanathan said.
CSK will be heading into the auction with 55 crore rupees and Viswanathan admitted that they would be going in with a lower purse. The CSK CEO also feels that competing with other sides for Indian players could be a problem as they will have a better purse than them.
“We knew that if we retain these players, we would have a lesser purse to go into the auction. We knew that we wouldn’t be able to compete with the other teams when it comes to the best of the Indian players. I mean, we will still try, but i don’t think we’ll be able to get them at the auction,” he added.
Pant is amongst the Indian players who registered for the auction with a base price of 2 crores.
Indian Players With Rs 2 Crore Base Price
Khaleel Ahmed, Ravichandran Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Deepak Chahar, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer, Avesh Khan, Ishan Kishan, Mukesh Kumar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Prasidh Krishna, T Natarajan, Krunal Pandya, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Devdutt Padikkal, Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul, and Mohammed Shami.
