CSK and their youth-first policy in auction explained by Fleming saying they ‘Might’ve been a little bit slow to evolve’
At the IPL 2026 player auction, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) signed two uncapped players for a joint-record INR 14.2 crore each, clearly departing from the “experience-first” mentality that had characterised them over the tournament’s first eighteen seasons. Head coach Stephen Fleming has acknowledged that CSK may have been “a little bit slow” to keep up with the T20 format’s progress in light of these additions.
He claimed that the change in perspective started in IPL 2025, when Dewald Brevis and the uncapped Ayush Mhatre and Urvil Patel, who were all signed halfway through the season, gave a top order that had been having trouble keeping up with other IPL teams a much-needed feeling of adventure.
Despite finishing last in the season, CSK learnt from it and signed 20-year-old Prashant Veer and 19-year-old Kartik Sharma for a total of INR 28.4 crore during Tuesday’s auction in Abu Dhabi.
“As the game has evolved, we might have been a little bit slow to evolve with it,” Fleming said. “Only halfway through the [2025] tournament we had a big shift and you saw with the players we got in as reserves, there was a shift in what we needed to do.
“Sometimes you can hang on to theories and philosophies because of past success but we identified that we needed to shift and partly the work that we did last season halfway through has enabled us to continue that work done.”
Mhatre, Urvil, Veer, and Kartik are part of a new breed of players who have grown up training to match the demands of Twenty20 cricket. They are just as likely to attract the attention of IPL scouts in local T20 leagues as they are to arrive via the more conventional path of age-group and domestic cricket. According to Fleming, these “T20 babies” played with an emphasis on showcasing their abilities, when previous generations might have questioned themselves in an attempt to gauge the match’s circumstances.
“I just wonder if we’re now seeing the product of T20 coming to the fore,” Fleming said. “We witnessed at the start of last year, and certainly the year before that my view used to be that experience was going to win, but now you have this fearless athlete that’s been brought up on T20 cricket and has a skillset that’s mouthwatering, and they just have no fear about what environment they need to exhibit these skills.
“So that is one thing to acknowledge, that T20 babies are now coming through. And it’s just that mental aspect. Sometimes an experienced player can get caught up in himself, trying to work out where the game’s going and what’s going on. But these young players these days, they’re just very free and they only know one way.
“So there’s real appeal, especially when the game is being played faster and faster. I think it’s a byproduct of T20 being around for some time now and we’re all learning, being involved with it, and the faster it gets, these young players seem to play better.”