Sanju Samson is officially a Chennai Super Kings (CSK). Yes, let that sink in, CSK fans! Samson’s big move to Chennai has finally gone from rumour to reality, and the first visuals of him in yellow made it clear just how much this moment means to him.
The keeper batter, who spent over a decade shaping his identity at Rajasthan Royals (RR), slipped into CSK’s No. 11 jersey for the first time and admitted it felt nothing like anything he had worn before. Considering the trade that brought him here was the biggest in IPL history, the emotion around it was never going to be small.
Fresh start for Sanju Samson
Samson’s switch to CSK was the headline moment of this pre auction window. The deal that sent Ravindra Jadeja and Sam Curran to Rajasthan and brought Samson to Chennai was unprecedented in scale. RR lost their captain, CSK parted with a franchise legend of more than ten years, and both sides leaned heavily on long-term planning before signing off on the exchange.
For Samson, the move is both a break from a long chapter and the start of a new one he had quietly been preparing for. He posted a note on social media thanking RR for the years gone by and acknowledging that his time there had run its course. Behind the scenes, conversations around his release had been active since the end of IPL 2025. Once he, Jadeja and Curran all gave consent, the BCCI cleared the transfer.
‘Felt like a champion,’ says Samson on wearing CSK’s yellow
CSK released a video on Saturday that captured Samson’s first reaction to wearing the yellow kit. Usually in pink of RR or the deeper blue shades of Team India, he said the bright gold of Chennai carried a different energy. It made him feel like a champion, he admitted, something he had imagined only from afar through the years of CSK dominance.
“I have been waiting for this day and I’m very fortunate that I am going to wear the yellow jersey. I always am in my dark colours like black, blue, brown, but yellow. Definitely, I think great feeling. To wear that jersey, I never thought about how I would feel after wearing CSK… it felt positive and I felt very happy. It felt different, like a different energy. I felt like a champion. I felt like, okay, wow,” Samson said in the video released by CSK.
Despite arriving as one of the league’s most experienced Indian batters, Samson is not walking in as captain or first-choice keeper. Ruturaj Gaikwad continues as skipper, and MS Dhoni is expected to feature again. That leaves Samson as a specialist batter for now.
