About 7 of the 10 men’s IPL owners have formally submitted interests in buying a team in the landscape-changing inaugural Women’s IPL, which will be played in March this year. Of the IPL franchise owners who have not put in their interests now is also Chennai Super Kings, despite their officials earlier stating that they’d go after one of the five available teams for the WIPL.
On the day of the technical bids for the WIPL, Mumbai Indians, Kolkata Knight Riders, SunRisers Hyderabad, Rajasthan Royals, Delhi Capitals, Punjab Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore showed up with bid documents. But the other three franchises – Chennai Super Kings, Gujarat Titans, and Lucknow Super Giants – are believed to have stayed away from WIPL.
Kasi Viswanathan, the CSK CEO, had last year reportedly stated that CSK will bid for a team in the WIPL. Now, however, CSK have pulled out from the WIPL citing it as a “strategic business call” while a Gujarat Titans official told Cricbuzz that the focus of the franchise, owned by US-based private equity firm CVC Capital, is the men’s team who are the defending IPL champions.’
This late withdrawal, and not showing interest in WIPL from the CSK franchise was met with great furore by fans on social media. Especially from CSK fans, which is a large fanbase in the country, and abroad.
Here are some of the tweets slamming CSK for pulling out of WIPL:
England cricket star Kate Cross was also very disappointed and heartbroken upon learning about this decision from CSK.
This fan was let down utterly by his beloved CSK.
Another fan vowed to not support CSK from now on.
Apart from the 7 IPL franchises, more than 20 non-IPL entities had taken the Invitation To Tender (ITT) document, including the Adani Group and Torrent Pharma, Accord Distillers, Oam Industries, Group On, JK Cement, Apollo Tyres, the Sriram Group, and Haldiram.
