Ben Stokes, the England cricket team skipper was one of the most sought after players in the IPL 2023 mini-auction and the Chennai franchise succeeded in purchasing him after fighting an intense bidding war with other franchises. Many cricket fans and experts are of the opinion that Chennai Super Kings will look forward to groom the 31 years old cricketer as skipper in order to take over the reins after MS Dhoni hangs his boots in the IPL and there are pretty good chances that this is last IPL of Mahi as a player.
CSK spent a huge amount of Rs. 16.25 crore for buying Ben Stokes and soon after he was bought, the England cricketer took to Twitter to post a message but he didn’t write any caption.
He tweeted only a yellow color image with no words:
— Ben Stokes (@benstokes38) December 23, 2022
CSK too shortly responded on this tweet in two words, “#Yellove All.!” with yellow heart emoji.
#Yellove All.! 💛
— Chennai Super Kings (@ChennaiIPL) December 23, 2022
This is the second time that Ben Stokes will be playing under MS Dhoni’s captaincy as earlier they both played for Rising Pune Supergiants (now defunct) in 2017.
Earlier, the Chennai franchise bid for Sam Curran and Jason Holder as well but it was not able to buy them, while Punjab Kings went all guns blazing after Sam Curran and made him the most expensive player of the IPL history by spending Rs. 18.5 crore on him, Rajasthan Royals purchased Jason Holder for Rs. 5.75 crore. However, CSK was in no mood to let Ben Stokes go to other team so it didn’t budge even after the price went above Rs. 10 crore.
The West Indian cricketer Chris Gayle who is currently a part of the expert panel of Jio Cinemas feels that buying Ben Stokes is a good move by CSK as now the team will have one more smart cricketing brain along with MS Dhoni but Stokes will certainly respect MSD and let him handle the things his way.
Gayle further says that the young cricketers of CSK will learn a lot from Ben Stokes and Dwayne Bravo is also there to guide them which is a good thing too. Chris Gayle strongly feels that Ben Stokes will easily fit into CSK culture considering the fact that he is an experienced cricketer.
CSK fans are also of the opinion that with Ben Stokes in the team, the IPL 2023 trophy is certainly coming to the Chennai team. What is your opinion in this regard? Let us know your views.