Former Indian batter and cricket analyst Aakash Chopra expressed surprise over Chennai Super Kings (CSK) not retaining Suresh Raina ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction in 2022.

On Tuesday, November 30, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) announced their IPL retention list ahead of the mega IPL 2022 auction. CSK kept MS Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Moeen Ali, and Ruturaj Gaikwad but released the likes of Suresh Raina and Faf du Plessis, which shocked many.

Raina, who is fondly known as "Chinna Thala", has been a loyal member of the CSK and he is currently the fourth-highest run-getter with 5528 runs in the IPL. However, Raina opted out of the last season, but he turned up for CSK in the IPL 2021, where he failed to leave a mark with the bat.

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Coming to the retentions by CSK, Chopra has pointed out that Chennai and Raina were hand in hand at one time, but now it seems that the "emotions have become slightly excess baggage" in the IPL.

Chopra said on his YouTube channel, “Faf du Plessis, Sam Curran, Josh Hazlewood, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur and Chinna Thala (Suresh Raina) are not there. At one time, Chennai and Suresh Raina were hands in hand, no longer. Emotions have become slightly excess baggage when it comes to the IPL.”

He added, “CSK had to keep Dhoni with them and they have done that. Along with him are Ravindra Jadeja and Ruturaj Gaikwad - so they have retained three Indians. The one overseas player is Moeen Ali, we had discussed that these could be the four names.”

Notably, Du Plessis wasn’t retained by CSK despite he smashed 633 runs in IPL 2021 and played a massive role in helping Chennai to lift their fourth IPL title.