Chennai Super Kings announce player signings for Cricket South Africa T20 League, confirm Faf Du Plessis as marquee

Chennai Super Kings Cricket Limited, the entity that owns the IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings (CSK) announced signing of five key players for the Cricket South Africa T20 league on Sunday. Major signings include former CSK star Faf Du Plessis, and England’s Moeen Ali. Sri Lanka’s Maheesh Theekshana, West Indies’ Romario Shepherd, and South Africa’s Gerald Coetzee have also been roped in.

The franchise will be based out of Johannesburg with the Wanderers Stadium as their home ground.

The rules of the league state that each franchise can select one marquee player from South Africa. For the other three players from the four contracted players to be signed, not more than two can be from the same country.

Accordingly, Du Plessis is the marquee player for the franchise and is an utmost certainty to captain the side as well. Besides, Moeen Ali, Theekshana, and Shepherd form the list of contracted players.

The franchise has further selected South African development player Coetzee on the recommendation of Du Plessis, as stated in the press release.

With roaring whistles, everywhere we go, we stride into Johannesburg! #WhistlePodu

— Chennai Super Kings (@ChennaiIPL) July 20, 2022

The franchise expressed their excitement on the acquisition of Du Plessis after they couldn’t get him back during the latest IPL auction and lost him to Royal Challengers Bangalore.

“Faf has been a backbone of Chennai Super Kings in the IPL for the last 10 years. He has been one of the most consistent players for our team. We were not fortunate to pick him during the last auction in the IPL. We were looking for an opportunity and that came up in the CSA T20 League. We are happy that we got Faf back with the Super Kings family. It will be a very good opportunity for Faf to come back and do as well as he did for the Chennai Super Kings. His experience as South African player and captain, knowing the conditions, will be invaluable. I'm sure that with his entry into the team, we should have a good future,” said K. S. Viswanathan, CEO of CSK Cricket Limited.

The franchise will now look forward to completing a well-balanced squad at the auctions in September.

While formal dates for the league have not been announced, Graeme Smith, the league commissioner had said that a January-February 2023 window has been marked for the launch.

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