Before the auction of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021, all eight teams released the list of their retained and released players. Rajasthan Royals decided to trade veteran batsman Robin Uthappa to Chennai Super Kings.

 


 

Significantly, Chennai will be Uthappa's sixth team in the cash-rich tournament. The senior batsman has played for Rajasthan Royals, Kolkata Knight Riders, Pune Warriors, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians in the tournament.

 

Uthappa has also achieved the Orange Cap by scoring the maximum runs twice in two seasons of IPL.

 

Robin Uthappa will most likely get a chance to open for the Yellow Army in IPL with Rituraj Gaikwad as Chennai's veteran opener Shane Watson announced his retirement from the T20 tournament last year. 

 

Robin Uthappa posted a video on Instagram in which he expressed that he wanted to win IPL trophy once before Mahendra Singh Dhoni before he retires from IPL.

 

Uthappa also said how thrilled and excited he is to play under Dhoni's captaincy for first time in IPL.

 

"Honestly, it's bit of a desire come true for me. I had a desire to play with him [MS Dhoni] again and win a tournament once before he retires. So it's a blessing to get an opportunity to play for CSK,” Uthappa said in the video.





In last year's IPL, the immensely experienced Uthappa failed to pull off anything special with his bat as he could score just 196 runs off 12 matches, with 41 being his highest score in a match.

 

However, one of the reasons for this is that Rajasthan gave him a chance to bat in the middle order while he is a top order batsman.  

 

Uthappa has been part of IPL since the very begning of the tournament and has scored 4607 runs in 189 matches with a remarkable strike rate of 129.99.

 

Uthappa had played a key role in Kolkata Knight Riders's maiden IPL victory in 2014. He had scored mammoth 660 runs for the franchise in that season.