CSK rope in left-armer Kuldip Yadav at 30 lakh as Khaleel Ahmed's full-season replacement
Chennai Super Kings have signed Delhi left-armer Kuldip Yadav as their full-season replacement for Khaleel Ahmed, the BCCI confirmed on Thursday. The 29-year-old joins the five-time champions at his base price of 30 lakh, exactly a month after Khaleel limped off mid-over against Kolkata Knight Riders.
The Khaleel gap CSK had been carrying
Khaleel pulled up five balls into the 17th over of CSK's April 14 home game against KKR, feeling discomfort in his right thigh as he ran in to bowl. The scan came back as a Grade 2 quadricep tear; rehab was put at 10 to 12 weeks and surgery followed. With CSK's playoff math already on the slide and the new-ball duties leaning hard on the rookies, the lack of a left-arm option in the seam unit had been one of the side's quieter problems for a month.
Gurjapneet Singh finished the over and stepped up in the games immediately after, but the pace battery has thinned. Friday's seven-wicket loss in Lucknow, where CSK posted 187 for five and then watched Mitchell Marsh tear into the bowling for 90 off 38, made the absence of a quality left-arm option even harder to ignore.
Who is Kuldip Yadav
Not the wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav who tours with India. This is the other one: a 29-year-old left-arm seamer out of Delhi, born October 1996, who first turned up at the IPL with Rajasthan Royals in 2021 and was back in their colours in 2023. Three IPL games in total, two wickets. He has not been on an IPL roster since.
The domestic record is thinner than the IPL number suggests. Three first-class games for five wickets, one List A appearance for one wicket, three T20s for two wickets. He has spent the bulk of the last two years on the Delhi state circuit and at training camps rather than racking up wickets, which is partly why his base price stayed at 30 lakh in the first place.
What CSK get is the variety. A left-arm seam angle into right-handers, a change-up away from the stock right-arm pace the side has been forced to rely on since Khaleel's surgery. That, more than the wicket-taking pedigree, is the case for the signing in a back-loaded run-in.
Where the season sits
CSK sit sixth on the table after Friday's defeat, with 12 points from 12 games and a net run rate of +0.027, and need to win their last two plus other results going their way to stay alive. Kuldip will not face the new ball, will probably not bowl at the death either, and will be a middle-overs option Dhoni can pull when the matchup demands a different angle.
The signing is the second of two replacement deals CSK have made this week, after 25-year-old Dian Forrester came in for Jamie Overton's thigh injury at 75 lakh. Two squad fixes inside a week is not how a defending champion expected its title defence to go. It is, on the present evidence, the most honest reading of where their bowling stocks have ended up.
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