Chennai Super Kings' Suresh Raina will miss the entire IPL for personal reasons. He has returned to India from the UAE.

"Suresh Raina has returned to India for personal reasons and will be unavailable for the remainder of the IPL season. Chennai Super Kings offers complete support to Suresh and his family during this time," team CEO Kasi Viswanathan said in a tweet from the Super Kings handle.

Raina's return to India comes as another big blow to the Super Kings camp from which at least 10 members - including an India player - tested positive for Covid-19 after a test on Thursday. It is understood there was only one player among those who tested positive, the others being net bowlers and support staff members. As a result, they have postponed the start of their training to next months while most other teams have hit the nets already in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Raina has been one of the most important players for the Super Kings, having played all but one of their 165 IPL matches since 2008. He is also the second-highest scorer in IPL history with 5368 runs, only behind Virat Kohli's tally of 5412, having also played for Gujarat Lions in 2016 and 2017 when the Super Kings were suspended for two years.

Raina had retired from international cricket earlier this month, announcing it on the same evening as MS Dhoni's international retirement, after the two had landed in Chennai for a preparatory camp the Super Kings had organised before flying out to Dubai. The camp was for India players only and included Dhoni, Raina, Kedar Jadhav, Deepak Chahar and Piyush Chawla. Ravindra Jadeja and Harbhajan Singh missed the camp and were to join the squad just before flying out to the UAE on August 21.

The Super Kings were the only team to hold a proper camp while Kings XI Punjab and Mumbai Indians also organised some training sessions for the local players in Bengaluru and Mumbai respectively. Since the Super Kings have some of the oldest players in the IPL, they wanted to give their Indian players some training as they had all been at home in lockdown since March.

More to follow...