Chennai Super Kings is among the strongest franchises in the Indian Premier League. The team has won the title thrice, making it the second most successful side in the history of the IPL behind Mumbai Indians. 

Under the leadership of great MS Dhoni, CSK's mantra of success has been consistency and clarity in both plans and personnel. The team makes the least number of changes to its first-choice playing XI each year. 

It's a line of thought also advocated by its longstanding head coach Stephen Fleming; empowering and maximising whatever resources you have available, helps the team overcome many of its deficiencies. 

Last season again, the champion duo of Dhoni and Fleming came together to lead CSK's surge towards the final where it lost to MI gutwrenchingly by just 1 run. 

Looking ahead to the next season, however, with an eye towards the future, CSK made a few important tweaks to its squad through retention and release before the auction in December. 

Here are the players CSK retained: MS Dhoni (c), Suresh Raina, Faf du Plessis, M Vijay, Ravindra Jadeja, Mitchell Santner, Scott Christopher Kuggeleijn, Kedar Jadhav, Ambati Rayudu, Narayan Jagadeeshan, Harbhajan Singh, KM Asif, Shardul Thakur, Shane Watson, Imran Tahir, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Deepak Chahar, Monu Kumar, Karn Sharma

And these are the ones the team let go: Chaitanya Bishnoi, Dhruv Shorey, Sam Billings, David Willey and Mohit Sharma