TABLE OF POINTS IPL 2020
For the first time in their 11-year history (they were banned for two years), CSK – with just three wins out of 10 – they’re looking at a no-entry in the last four stages. Over the years, Dhoni has at times struck out at Houdini himself by conjuring acts and shaping comebacks, but this time even he seems to have given up.
When coach Stephen Fleming after the loss to the Rajasthan Royals on Monday said, “the team has run out of energy,” it was clear that everyone in camp believes a miracle is out of the question this year.
This feeling of resignation is likely due to the fact that Dhoni himself is a pale shadow of his former self as a player. Physically, he has stayed in shape, but Dhoni has become a problem with the bat in the middle order. Not once in the 10 games has he come close to winning a match for the team and young players like Ruturaj Gaikwad and N Jagadeesan have been eliminated for much less.
Add to that his stubbornness in selecting teams in the name of the “process” by which he continued to play. Kedar Jadhav when the right-hander had nothing to show. “What is the process when the team selection process itself is wrong?” Former India captain Krish Srikkanth did not mince words during his comment season.
Some in the CSK camp believe they didn’t have much of a choice after Suresh Raina left the ship due to “personal reasons,” but the question to ask is why people like Ruturaj and Jagadeesan are on the team if they are. I am not going to play.
While some Tamil Nadu Premier League players like Natarajan and Varun Chakravarthy are doing well for other franchises, Dhoni and CSK management have not been interested in backing local talent and have stuck with players like Karn. Sharma, Piyush Chawla and Harbhajan Singh (which did not appear despite requests from management) they are past their prime.
“There is no substitute for experience and you can’t buy game awareness in the marketplace,” a senior CSK official told TOI in 2018, when they didn’t pick U19 stars Subhman Gill, Prithvi Shaw, Shivam Mavi or Kamlesh Nagarkotti and instead chose Harbhajan, Jadhav, Karn and the like. Yes, it paid them dividends for two years, but now that we look to a difficult future, there is hardly anything in the closet.
Dhoni, however, believes he lives in the present. He is the almighty boss of CSK and after this disaster the first thing to do is hang up his gaming boots and free up a 15 crore purse to buy a profitable future star. The man from Jharkhand still has a brilliant cricket mind and will be better at gathering troops from the bench than on the field.
But he needs an ‘active’ player to lead the team in the middle. Overpaid, undisciplined and underperforming superstars like Raina (Rs 11 crore), Jadhav (Rs 7.8 crore) and Karn (Rs 5 crore) should be asked to allow CSK to open huge funds for upcoming auctions or trade some players like KL Rahul, Kane williamson o Rashid Khan from their respective teams before the auction.
But that’s easier said than done because for every franchise, enemy number one is CSK. They know how difficult it has been to beat the men in yellow for the past decade and now that the Chennai franchise is in a tight corner, it will be interesting to see if other owners allow them the margin to become a force again.
Once Jordan retired after 1998, the Bulls never won the NBA title again, despite their desperate attempts at rebuilding. One can only hope that CSK and Dhoni will not go the same way in the next few years.
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