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CSK let them go, DC and RR cashed in: Sameer Rizvi and Tushar Deshpande make Chennai look back at lost talents
Chennai Super Kings faced a stark reminder of lost talent as former players Sameer Rizvi and Tushar Deshpande led their new teams to victories.
One IPL day does not prove a franchise has got everything wrong, but April 4 offered Chennai Super Kings a particularly awkward reminder of what can happen when identified talent matures elsewhere. In the afternoon game, Sameer Rizvi played the defining innings of Delhi Capitals’ chase against Mumbai Indians, making 90 off 51 balls in a six-wicket win at the Arun Jaitley Stadium. In the night match, Tushar Deshpande was part of Rajasthan Royals’ successful defence against Gujarat Titans, with RR winning by six runs in Ahmedabad. Both were once CSK players. Both were released. Both are now contributing to wins for other teams.
Notably, Rizvi was the high-cost upside bet. Tushar was the lower-cost Indian seamer who had already delivered for Chennai. On Saturday, both names came back into focus from a CSK angle, not through nostalgia but through hard evidence.
Sameer Rizvi: from CSK’s ₹8.40 crore gamble to DC’s ₹95 lakh pick-up
Rizvi’s arc is the sharper one because his contribution was not peripheral. Delhi were chasing 163 on a slow surface where Mumbai managed only four sixes in their entire innings. Rizvi then hit seven sixes and seven fours himself, finishing with 90 off 51 and taking DC home with 11 balls to spare. That was a chase-defining knock on a surface where acceleration was not straightforward.
CSK had bought Rizvi for ₹8.40 crore at the 2024 auction. That was a major uncapped Indian investment, the kind of buy that signals a franchise believes it is securing future batting firepower. But after he returned to the pool, Delhi Capitals bought him for ₹95 lakh in the 2025 mega auction, against a base price of ₹30 lakh. In pure auction terms, CSK paid premium projection money; DC later paid value money and are now getting returns from that reduced risk.
That matters because this was not a random late-career revival story. Rizvi is still in the asset-building phase. The team that once paid top-end price for his upside is no longer the team benefiting from his most visible impacts.
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Tushar Deshpande: the low-cost CSK bowler who became expensive elsewhere
Tushar Deshpande’s case is different, but from a CSK perspective, it is arguably more uncomfortable. He was not a speculative giant-fee buy. CSK picked him for ₹20 lakh in the 2022 mega auction. He then became their highest wicket-taker in the 2023 title-winning season, taking 21 wickets in 16 matches. That is not fringe value. That is a central contribution in a championship year.
Yet ahead of the 2025 mega auction, Rajasthan Royals onboarded him and then secured him for ₹6.50 crore. The market had clearly moved. What had once been a ₹20 lakh CSK bowler had become a ₹6.50 crore Indian pace option with proven IPL wicket-taking history. On Saturday against the Gujarat Titans, Tushar’s figures were not headline-stealing, but the way he nailed the yorkers in the last over would make CSK envious, especially with the way their bowling attack is performing currently. That is the larger point: Rajasthan now own a bowler CSK had already developed into a recognisable IPL resource.
This is less about regret and more about squad value migration
The analytical takeaway is not that CSK were wrong to ever move on. Mega auctions force difficult calls. The sharper question is what kind of value has migrated away from them. Sameer Rizvi represents an Indian middle-order power bat once valued by CSK at ₹8.40 crore and now flourishing for DC at ₹95 lakh. Tushar represents an Indian seamer CSK bought cheaply, developed into a title-year wicket-taker, and then watched become a ₹6.50 crore acquisition for RR.
On one day, two ex-CSK players helped two other franchises win. That alone speaks to asset judgment across cycles: who spots talent, who holds it, who lets it go, and which team is around when the next phase of value finally arrives.
