The IPL 2020 season begins from September 19 onwards with defending champions Mumbai Indians taking on Chennai Super Kings in a repeat of the 2019 final, in the first match at Abu Dhabi from 7.30 PM IST. The whole tournament will be played across three venues in the UAE - Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and Dubai.

Chennai Super Kings had gone through a lot with 13 of their contingent members testing positive for COVID-19, which extended their quarantine period from 6 to 14 days. Then two of their premier players in Suresh Raina and Harbhajan Singh opted out of the tournament citing personal reasons.

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There were reports floating that CSK might include one more foreign player in order to compensate for missing out on good players and the name suggested was Dawid Malan of England. Malan has had a terrific outing in T20Is recently against Australia and is now the no.1 ranked batsman in ICC T20I batting rankings.

However, speaking to ANI, CSK CEO Kasi Vishwanathan refuted the rumors and said, "This is news to me as well because our quota of foreign players is already full. So I don't know how we can have another foreigner in the squad."

Asked if there was any injury issue with any other foreign player that led to the rumors, he said there isn't any.  

On the other hand, the CSK team received a huge boost as their premier fast bowler Deepak Chahar was cleared to practice after recovering from Coronavirus and will begin training from Friday onwards. Chahar, along with Ruturaj Gaikwad and 11 other members of the CSK contingent had tested positive for COVID-19 after reaching Dubai.

CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan said that Chahar has got an all-clear not just from the CSK side but also from the BCCI medical team and is ready to hit the ground running. "Deepak has all the necessary clearance from the CSK and BCCI side and will start training from today (Friday)," he said.

(ANI inputs)