The 2024 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), four months before its kick-off took the limelight immediately after India's loss in the World Cup 2023 final with the teams announcing their retentions and releases. Amid all of this, some monumental transfers took place with Mumbai Indians acquiring the services of their former player Hardik Pandya back with Avesh Khan being traded for Devdutt Padikkal to Rajasthan Royals. There were rumours of a couple of more high-profile trades but they ended up being just rumours.
One of them going around was of Sanju Samson, the 29-year-old wicketkeeper-batter, who has been leading the Rajasthan Royals for the last three seasons. A few unverified accounts said that Samson was in talks with the Chennai Super Kings and the possible successor of MS Dhoni at the franchise, but it turned out to be false. One of the users attributed such a claim to R Ashwin, senior Indian cricketer and Samson's teammate at the Royals and he was quick to fact-check the said user on X (formerly Twitter).
"Sanju Samson was approached by CSK as a captain which was nearly finalised. But it didn't go through Sanju rejected their offer. There's a definite possibility in future," claimed the user quoting Ashwin to which the bowler replied saying, "Fake news! Don't lie quoting me."
In the day and age of social media where fake news has become rampant, fake-quoting has become a norm these days for easy engagement and this was not the first or the last time this happened with the celebrities. Ashwin, however, was not going to sit and watch and busted the fake news then and there.
Ahead of the 2024 edition of the IPL, Ashwin was retained by the Royals among 17 players while the likes of Jason Holder, Joe Root, Obed McCoy and Murugan Ashwin were released.
