Ace Rajasthan Royals spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has quashed all reports of him claiming on his YouTube channel that his captain Sanju Samson was approached by Chennai Super Kings with an offer of replacing the legendary Mahendra Singh Dhoni as a captain.
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With the deadline for franchises to reveal the names of their retained players ahead of IPL 2024 auction just passing by, there has been a lot of media speculation around certain probable high-profile trades/transfers lately. While a few of them eventually proved to be true, one of the false ones was propagated in Ashwin’s name.
Ashwin, whose work on the streaming platform has all but secured an alternative career option of a broadcaster for him, took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to clear the confusion around Super Kings expressing interest in Samson not only as a player but also as a potential skipper.
“Sanju Samson was approached by CSK as a captain which was nearly finalised. But it dint go through Sanju rejected their offer. Theres a definite possibility in future,” wrote a user named @CricketWithRosh on X last night.
In no mood of mincing his words, Ashwin termed the above mentioned quote as “fake” and a “lie” to ensure that no more assumptions are made on the matter.
Fake news! Dont lie quoting me
— Ashwin (@ashwinravi99) November 29, 2023
Therefore, the question around whether Samson refused CSK’s proposal or not remains baseless as no proposal was made in the first place.
Can Sanju Samson Still Join CSK?
Technically, yes.
Practically, seems pretty far-fetched.
It is to be noted that franchises can still participate in the trading of players till a week before the auction for the 17th season of the IPL, i.e., December 12. Once the auction is done with on December 19, the trading window will again open till a month before the commencement of the tournament.
Hence, if both the parties agree to the deal, Chennai could become Samson’s third IPL franchise. About to complete a decade at Royals across two separate stints, Samson, however, is highly unlikely to make a switch irrespective of the financial reward on offer due to his vision of making Rajasthan a “big team”.
Ashwin, on the other hand, validated former India and CSK batter Ambati Rayudu‘s opinion around Ruturaj Gaikwad being an apt candidate to take the leadership mantle from Dhoni at the franchise.
