The veteran batsman was part of Chennai Super Kings from its inception in 2008, and IPL 2022 will be the first season in which he will not be part of any franchise.
One of the biggest stories coming out of the 2022 IPL Mega Auctions has been Suresh Raina emerging among the unsold players’ list. He has over 5500 runs in the marquee T20 competition and has been one of the greatest IPL players ever, making the No.3 spot his own at CSK, where he won four trophies with the side, most recently in the 2021 edition.
Many guessed that Raina – Chennai’s highest run-scorer in IPL history and fourth-highest overall – would head back to the franchise, especially given their reliance on trusted players, including Dwayne Bravo and Ambati Rayudu, despite not being in the best of form.
Post the auction, a video recorded in 2021, where Raina proclaims his unequivocal loyalty to the Chennai franchise, has been making the rounds on social media.
The 35-year-old also appears to make a promise to the fans to convince MS Dhoni to continue for a few seasons if they ended up winning the 2021 edition of the IPL. Against all odds, the Super Kings did win the tournament, and Dhoni did end up on the retained list for the franchise.
However, what has now transpired is something that not many fans imagined, with Raina now out of the franchise, despite his age-old relationship with the franchise.
In the video, Raina also says that he would leave IPL the day his captain Dhoni hangs up his boots. Raina went unsold in the initial rounds, which many thought meant that CSK would try to buy him in the accelerated rounds of the auction.
But quite surprisingly, Raina did not even feature in any of the accelerated sets, definitively ending his tenure with the Chennai Super Kings.
“If Dhoni bhaai doesn’t play next season, I too won’t play. We’ve been playing since 2008, if we win this year then I’ll convince him to play next year too. I’ll try my best. If he will not play, then I don’t think I will play for any IPL team,”
he said in the video, taken during an interview prior to the 2021 IPL season.
