There was a trend of #Boycott_ChennaiSuperKings running on social media by furious CSK fans soon after the franchise had bought Sri Lankan mystery spinner Maheesh Theekshana, at the IPL 2022 auctions.
While the CSK fans don’t have any personal issues with Theekshana, they didn’t want any Sri Lankan player in their squad. In fact, Theekshana is the first Sri Lankan player to play for CSK since Nuwan Kulasekara in 2012.
Although Sri Lankan cricket has been on a decline in the past few years and not many high-quality IPL worthy players have emerged from the country, CSK are believed to have made a conscious effort to not buy Sri Lankan players until Theekshana.
Theekshana made his IPL debut against SRH in Mumbai on Saturday. Also, people feel that if and when CSK return to play at Chepauk in Chennai, Theekshana might not be with the franchise.
Here’s the reason for this enrage of CSK and Tamil Nadu people over CSK buying Theekshana: Maheesh Theekshana is a Sinhalese, and Sinhalese soldiers are accused of having committed war crimes against Tamilians in Sri Lanka during the military action against LTTE in 2009. The group was established to end alleged Sri Lankan govt atrocities against Tamils and demand an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka. Reportedly around 20 lakh Tamil people are thrown out as refugees by Sinhala State Terrorism.
Fans feel that allowing a Sri Lankan player to represent CSK means that the franchise has ignored the genocide conducted on Tamils in Sri Lanka. Further, the Sri Lankan government is also suspected to discriminate against ethnic Tamils living there and also of killing Tamil Naud fishermen there.
Speaking about the game, Theekshana couldn’t make any difference to CSK’s fortunes as the side slumped to their fourth defeat of the season in as many matches. Theekshana returned with uninspiring bowling figures of 0/31 in 4 overs as SRH chased down 155 with rather ease.
Both CSK and Mumbai Indians have now lost all their four matches so far and sit at the bottom pile of the table.
