The mega-auction for the IPL 2022 took place on Feb 12 and 13 in Bengaluru and the 10 IPL franchises left no stone unturned in buying the players of their choice. This year’s IPL will be bigger than ever but many cricket fans are a little sad because they are already missing their favourite cricketers who won’t be a part of the tournament. While the former South African cricketer AB de Villiers who played for Royal Challengers Bangalore decided to take retirement from all forms of cricket, the West Indian cricketer Chris Gayle who is also known as Universe Boss kept himself out of the auction. Nevertheless, there is one Indian cricketer who will be missed a lot, especially by the fans of MS Dhoni led Chennai Super Kings.
We are talking about Suresh Raina, the Indian cricketer who played in all the IPLs excluding the IPL 2020 in which he made himself unavailable for personal reasons. The 35 years old former cricketer who is also known as Mr. IPL went unsold in the mega-auction for the IPL 2022. He has scored 5528 runs in his IPL career and has been a part of CSK whenever the Chennai franchise won the IPL title. Till now, CSK has won the IPL four times and it is the second most successful team of the tournament after Mumbai Indians which has won the league five times.
Suresh Raina is the fourth highest run-getter in the IPL after Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawana and Rohit Sharma but for Men in Yellow, he is the highest run getter and how emphatic he has been can be understood by the fact that he has scored more than 400 runs in 9 out of 14 IPLs that he has played.
The CSK supporters call Suresh Raina as Chinna Thala and the official Twitter handle of CSK took to the micro-blogging site Twitter to pay an emotional tribute to him. CSK thanked him for the all the memories and wrote, “Super Thanks for all the Yellove memories, Chinna Thala! #SuperkingForever”
Super Thanks for all the Yellove memories, Chinna Thala!🥺
#SuperkingForever 🦁 pic.twitter.com/RgyjXHyl9l
— Chennai Super Kings (@ChennaiIPL) February 13, 2022
The IPL won’t be the same again without Suresh Raina. We will miss you Chinna Thala!