Chennai Super Kings (CSK) is one of the most successful teams in the Indian Premier League (IPL). The team from Chennai has so far won the IPL trophy 4 times. If we leave the 13th season of the IPL, then every season the CSK team has reached either the playoffs or the finals.
Many veteran players have played for the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) team so far and the players have contributed significantly to the success of the team. If you look at the first season, till now players like Stephen Fleming, Michael Hussey, Matthew Hayden, Muttiah Muralitharan, Doug Bollinger, Ravichandran Ashwin and Albie Morkel have played for CSK and have succeed.
However, there were some players who did not even get a chance to play a single match for the franchise and kept on the bench. Some players could not play due to injury and some due to team combination.
In this article, we take a look at 3 popular bowlers who were definitely a part of the Chennai Super Kings team but did not get a chance to play in a single match.
3 fast bowlers who never played for Chennai Super Kings despite being in the squad
Irfan Pathan was part of Chennai Super Kings in 2015
Irfan Pathan was one of best all-rounder of the Indian team. He was known for his lethal swing bowling and also batted well on several occasions. Irfan Pathan was called the next Kapil Dev of India, but suddenly he was dropped from Team India.
He was bought by the Chennai Super Kings in 2015 after playing 98 matches in the IPL for Punjab Kings (formerly Kings XI Punjab), Delhi Daredevils (now Delhi Capitals) and Sunrisers Hyderabad. He was injured before Chennai’s first match against Delhi that year, due to which he could not play a single match in the yellow jersey. In the year 2016, he was a part of the Pune team and in 2017, Gujarat Lions. He has now retired from playing cricket and does commentary work.
Andrew Tye
Andrew Tye from Australia is a specialist bowler in T20 cricket, known for his exceptional bowling skills in the death overs. In 2015, Tye was bought by Chennai Super Kings. At that time, the Chennai team had excellent bowlers like Mohit Sharma and Ashish Nehra, who were also getting the support of Dwayne Bravo. These three bowlers were taking important wickets, in such a situation, captain Dhoni did not think it right to take any risk. This was the reason that he was not part of the playing XI even once in the 8th season of IPL. He was later released by the franchise.
Matt Henry
Matt Henry is a great fast bowler from New Zealand. He was a part of the Chennai Super Kings team in the 2014 IPL season. He was the second Kiwi bowler after Tim Southee to be a part of the team. The inclusion of Henry in the Chennai team was a decision that surprised everyone.
It was rumored that the coach of the team, Stephen Fleming, was behind it. Henry was involved in the team in the 2014 and 2015 IPL season, but during this time he did not play a single match for the MS Dhoni led franchise.