Before the IPL 2025 season, everyone is eager to know whether 5-time champion captain MS Dhoni will take the field again or not. Last season, due to Chennai Super Kings qualifying for the playoffs and thus missing out on the title, there was a pang in the hearts of millions of fans whether Dhoni would not be able to end his career with the title. Dhoni's fans can now take a sigh of relief in this matter as the chances of their beloved 'Thala' playing in the next season have increased. BCCI has decided to re-implement the 'uncapped player' rule in IPL, which was demanded by Chennai Super Kings, so that MS Dhoni can be retained.

Uncapped players rule returned

On Saturday, September 28, the IPL Governing Council meeting was held in Bengaluru, in which many rules including players retention, auction purse were decided for this year's mega auction. According to reports, this time BCCI has increased the retention limit to 6 players, with the option of retaining them through direct retention or Right to Match (RTM) card. That means, if the franchise wants, it can retain all the 6 players in advance or it can retain them through RTM in the mega auction or it can do a combination of both.

However, the board has also kept a rule to retain at least 1 and maximum 2 uncapped players. While this benefit is usually given to young players or those players who have not yet made their international debut for Team India, this time MS Dhoni and Chennai Super Kings can benefit from it. In fact, ESPN-Cricinfo has revealed in the report that BCCI has decided to re-introduce the rule, which was abolished before the 2021 auction. This rule is to consider players who have not played international cricket for 5 years as uncapped players.

Dhoni and CSK benefit

Dhoni retired from international cricket in August 2020 but he was out of international cricket since July 2019. In such a situation, before the mega auction, it would have been 5 years since he left international cricket. In this way he can be retained as an uncapped player. The retention fee for an uncapped player is still Rs 4 crore. In such a situation, CSK can retain Dhoni by paying only Rs 4 crore, due to which they will be able to retain him in the team and also there will be no need to spend much money on him.

Actually, this rule was a part of the league since the beginning of IPL but it was never used. Therefore it was abolished in 2021. Now it has been decided to start it again and a major reason for this is being attributed to Dhoni. Actually, in July there was a meeting between BCCI and franchise owners regarding the retention rules. Then the report claimed that in this meeting, CSK had demanded BCCI to again include this rule of uncapped players, so that Dhoni can be retained as an uncapped player. However, the franchise had rejected such claims.