IPL Auction 2020: Stephen Fleming discloses the reason behind CSK buying Piyush Chawla for ₹6.75 crore

What's the story?

Chennai Super Kings' head coach Stephen Fleming has spoken out about the reason why the three-time IPL winners bought Piyush Chawla for a massive amount of ₹6.75 crore in the IPL 2020 Auction. Fleming explained that Chawla is a competent spinner with some unique skills, and added that the spin friendly conditions at their home ground played a major role in this signing.

The background

Kolkata Knight Riders released the wily Chawla at the close of the trade window last month. The leg-spinner entered the auction with a base price of ₹1 crore.

Mumbai Indians and Kings XI Punjab initially engaged in a bidding war for him and later, Chennai Super Kings joined them as well. Ultimately, the south Indian franchise grabbed him at a price of ₹6.75 crore, which surprised a few cricket experts.

Chennai already had Imran Tahir, Harbhajan Singh and Karn Sharma in their squad, and so the addition of another spin bowler puzzled the fans.

Imran Tahir

The heart of the matter

During the post-auction press conference, Fleming talked about his team's signings on the day. When asked about Chawla, he replied:

"He (Piyush Chawla) is a quality leg-spinner which we value very highly. He is a different type of bowler than Karn Sharma but we also have to make some decisions around how that all fits in.

"We took the opportunity that came up and we have a pretty well balanced squad. We have always favored spin. Our home ground is very spin dominant so, having a lot of spinners is not a bad thing."

Stephen Fleming

Fleming is right in saying that Karn is a very different spinner to Chawla. Besides, the former didn't play too many matches in the 2019 edition because of his inconsistency, but Chawla is more likely to feature in the XI and thus free up an overseas spot (Tahir).

What's next?

It will be intriguing to see which spinners make the cut for Chennai Super Kings playing XI. The team management would not want to bench Chawla after buying him at such a high price, so it is possible that we could even see Tahir and Chawla bowling together in some matches.