Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the captain, has reigned supreme in the Indian Premier League throughout the years. Under his leadership, the Chennai Super Kings have proven to be the most consistent team in the tournament. He has captained a team in IPL 174 times (CSK and Rising Pune Supergiant), winning 104 times, making him the only captain to win more than a hundred games in IPL history.
His 60.11 percent win rate is by far the best among captains who have led a team in a minimum of 50 games. He has won the title three times and has led CSK to 8 finals, out of the 10 tournaments in which he has participated. CSK enjoys the best winning percentage of all teams, but it is not the most successful team in IPL.
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That is because they have failed to solve the riddle of the Mumbai Indians. The Mumbai Indians lost the 2010 IPL final to CSK and were without a title until 2012, by which time CSK had already won the trophy twice. But things have changed for the ‘Blue Brigade’ since Rohit Sharma took over as team captain.
Rohit has led the team to victory in four titles, winning every alternate year since 2013. And what better, three of the four victories in the final were against Chennai Super Kings, including a 1-race victory in the final last year. His third title came against Rising Pune Supergiant in 2017, a team that Dhoni was a part of.
Thus, Dhoni has lost four of the five IPL finals to the Mumbai Indians, of which three came in a Chennai Super Kings jersey while leading the team.
To understand this better, it is necessary to look at the following table.
As the table shows, the Mumbai Indians are the only team that has dominated CSK and that makes this rivalry the largest in IPL history. In fact, CSK has not lost more than 9 games against any other team except the Mumbai Indians. Their win rate is positive against all teams except the Mumbai Indians.
To make matters worse, CSK will have to break the bad luck of having lost the last 5 games between the two teams. In an unprecedented display of dominance, MI executed a clean sweep over CSK in an IPL edition for the first time in 2019, as they beat Dhoni’s team twice in the league phase and twice in the play-offs, which included the suspense of a final. .
This is a record that will upset someone like Dhoni, who has otherwise had a dream career in the tournament. The poor record of the Mumbai Indians in the UAE, played five and lost five, is something that could give Dhoni and his team a glimmer of hope.
But the challenge will be immense as CSK is missing two of its impact players in Suresh Raina and Harbhajan Singh. And Dhoni himself has not played competitive cricket for over a year. It will be interesting to see what ‘Captain Cool’ comes up with as he returns to the cricket field in CSK colors.
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