IPL 2026 starts on March 28 and CSK have one of the most exciting players in world cricket walking into their dressing room. Sanju Samson was named Player of the Tournament at the T20 World Cup 2026 just seven days ago.

Sanju Samson scored 321 runs, hit 89 in the final against New Zealand and broke the all-time record for sixes in a single T20 World Cup with 24. Sanju Samson is arriving at CSK in the form of his life and the expectation around what he could do for a team that finished last in 2025 is enormous.

But there is a pattern sitting quietly in the background of all this excitement and it has been building since 2009 without a single exception. It has nothing to do with his form or CSK’s squad. It has to do with an award he won seven days ago.

The IPL curse that has never been broken

The pattern goes back to 2009 and it has held across seventeen years of IPL cricket without a single exception. No player who has won the Player of the Tournament award at an ICC event has ever lifted the IPL trophy in the same season.

Not once. Dilshan won the T20 World Cup 2009 POTM and Delhi lost in the semi-finals. Pietersen won it in 2010 and RCB finished fourth. Yuvraj won the ODI World Cup 2011 POTM and Pune Warriors finished ninth. Watson won it in 2012 and Rajasthan failed to qualify.

Kohli won it in 2014 and RCB failed to qualify. Starc won the ODI World Cup POTM 2015 and RCB lost in the qualifiers. Williamson won it at the ODI World Cup 2019 and SRH lost in the eliminator.

Warner won the T20 World Cup 2021 POTM and SRH finished last. Bumrah won it in 2024 and MI finished last. Ravindra won the Champions Trophy POTM 2025 and CSK finished last. Seventeen years. Zero IPL titles. The only player who came close was Kohli in 2016 and that story deserves its own section.

The closest anyone came to breaking it and why it still hurts

Kohli in 2016 came closer than anyone before or since. He had just won the T20 World Cup POTM in April and walked into the IPL and had the greatest individual batting season the tournament has ever seen. 973 runs.

Four centuries. Seven fifties in a single season. He dragged RCB from the bottom of the table all the way to the final and the final was at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, their home ground. The target was 209. RCB were 114 for 0 after ten overs with Kohli at the crease.

Everyone in that ground thought the curse was done. Then Kohli was bowled for 54. RCB collapsed. They lost by 8 runs. The curse survived the greatest individual IPL season in history by 8 runs and it has not been threatened since.

Why the pattern has become more dangerous since 2020

In the earlier years the curse mostly meant a semi-final exit or a playoff failure. Teams were not winning the title but they were not falling apart either. That changed in the 2020s. Warner won the T20 World Cup 2021 POTM and SRH finished last and released him mid-season.

Bumrah won the T20 World Cup 2024 POTM and MI finished tenth out of ten. Ravindra won the 2025 Champions Trophy POTM and CSK finished tenth out of ten. Three POTM winners in the 2020s and three last place finishes.

The curse is no longer just stopping teams from winning. It is sending them to the bottom of the table and it has done it three times running.

Why Sanju Samson in 2026 is the most dangerous version of this yet

There is a specific version of this curse that history shows is the most damaging and it comes down to when the tournament ends. When the ICC event finishes just days before the IPL begins the results have been consistently bad.

Yuvraj won the ODI World Cup 2011 POTM six days before the IPL started and Pune Warriors finished last. Kohli won it ten days before the IPL 2014 and RCB failed to qualify. Kohli won it six days before the IPL 2016 and RCB lost the final.

Ravindra won it thirteen days before the 2025 IPL and CSK finished last. When the POTM award comes in February or March the winner’s team has a 100 percent failure rate at winning the title and a 40 percent chance of finishing dead last.

The 2026 T20 World Cup ended on March 8. The IPL starts on March 28. Sanju Samson has twenty days between winning the award and starting his first CSK match. Sanju Samson is in the most dangerous timing window the curse produces and he is joining a team that already finished last twelve months ago.

The phoenix pattern says CSK are due. The Deccan Chargers precedent says it has been done before. The POTM award curse says it has not allowed a single player carrying that to lift the IPL trophy in seventeen years and it has no intention of starting now. March 28 is when we find out which story wins.