IPL 2025: Stephen Fleming Shares CSK’s Strategy For R Ashwin

By Unnati Madan Last updated Nov 29, 2024

Chennai Super Kings (CSK) can use R Ashwin in different ways, according to their head coach Stephen Fleming, after the team bought the spinner for ₹9.75 crore in the mega auction held in Jeddah.

For the unversed, Ashwin was part of the Chennai Super Kings team that won the title in 2010 and 2011. After that, he played for the Punjab Kings, Rising Pune Supergiants, Delhi Capitals, and Rajasthan Royals.

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Stephen Fleming Shares CSK’s Strategy For R Ashwin

Speaking at a press conference, Stephen Fleming said: “It was a bit of a homecoming for Ashwin but he’s a world class bowler. Like Venky talked about, it’s not so much the price, you look at how someone fits in and there’s an emotional attachment of Ashwin with Chennai, so it is a nice fit.”

Fleming added: “He has still got a very good skill set but the bowler’s numbers are fantastic, he’s obviously towards the latter part of his career but the experience that he brings is handy with the bat and we think we can use him in a number of ways.”

“(The choice of) Noor Ahmed was looking more at the middle to attack, so if we do get turning conditions, then we’ve got an opportunity to keep taking wickets,” he said.

In addition to Ashwin, CSK also bought Afghanistan spinner Noor Ahmad, who has played for Gujarat Titans in the IPL, for ₹10 crore. Fleming mentioned that this decision was made to strengthen the team’s specific bowling strategies.

“We’ve got (Matheesha) Pathirana at the end which is the death aspect and we’ve just identified that the way the game’s going, your bowling has to be really specific and you have to take wickets to slow teams down.”

“If you’re just trying to contain then some of the hitting power of players these days will just take the game away from you, so we’ve tried to be smart with our options given our retained players and add some variation which maybe we lacked a little bit last year,” he said.

Chennai Super Kings (CSK) Full Squad For IPL 2025:

Ruturaj Gaikwad, Matheesha Pathirana, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, MS Dhoni, Devon Conway, Rahul Tripathi, Rachin Ravindra, R. Ashwin, Khaleel Ahmed, Noor Ahmad, Vijay Shankar, Sam Curran, Shaik Rasheed, Anshul Kamboj, Mukesh Choudhary, Deepak Hooda, Gurjapneet Singh, Nathan Ellis, Jamie Overton, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Ramakrishna Ghosh, Shreyas Gopal, Vansh Bedi, Andre Siddarth.

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