The 14th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is just a couple of weeks away with Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore getting the tournament underway on April 9. Chennai Super Kings (CSK), who failed to make the playoffs for the first time in their history last year, are hard at training led by skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Dhoni kickstarted the preparations for the forthcoming IPL 2021 earlier this month, having cleared their RT-PCR tests during the stipulated quarantine period. Apart from the legendary Dhoni, senior batsman Ambati Rayudu, Ruturaj Gaikwad and a few others are part of the camp that got underway on Monday.
The CSK team members are taking part in the intra-squad matches since, and during one such game on Wednesday (March 17), 22-year-old CSK youngster Harishankar Reddy bowled a beauty to dismiss captain Dhoni.
Reddy, the right-arm medium fast bowler, has been a regular in the Andhra team since 2018 and was bought for just Rs 20 lakh at the IPL 2021 auction last month. His father is a farmer and Reddy made his seniors debut in T20 in the season 2019-20. He is pursuing a bachelors degree in Kadapa.
CSK had during the recent mini-auction picked up England all-rounder Moeen Ali for Rs 7 crore, apart from Karnataka all-rounder K Gowtham (for Rs 9.25 crore) and Cheteshwar Pujra (Rs 50 lakh).
Three-time champion CSK begins its campaign the next day in Mumbai against Delhi Capitals. Interestingly, in this year’s IPL, all matches will be played at neutral venues, no team will play at their home venue.
