To understand Chennai Super Kings’ woes in the UAE this season, one has to go back to IPL auctions in 2018. CSK went to the auction table having retained its three pillars: Captain MS Dhoni, prolific scorer Suresh Raina and the all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja. Big players come at a price: 33 million rupees out of your 80 million rupee shopping bag.
They had Rs. 47 crore to give the rest of the team two fair match options, which they used to win back Shane Watson and Faf du Plessis, both in their thirties. Some of his other selections were Kedar Jadhav, Ambati Rayudu, Murali Vijay, Harbhajan Singh, and Imran Tahir.
Each was a proven international performer in his right, but the pending question was whether a team with so many players on the wrong side of 30 would last the course. Dhoni’s ‘daddy’s army’ kept finding ways to win games for two years. CSK won the 2018 IPL title and were runners-up last season.
With Chennai’s home advantage (CSK won 6 of 7 home games in 2019) they were taken away this year, and having lost Raina and Harbhajan before IPL 2020 started, CSK is the most affected among the eight teams.
WITHOUT MANY HOPES
With three wins in 10 games, CSK still has a mathematical chance of making the playoffs, but the captain and coach see the writing on the wall. “This season, we really weren’t there,” Dhoni, 39, said in his post-game remarks Monday.
“It’s fair to say looking at the table now that this team may have run out of juice. If you look at the three-year cycle, we win the first year; he lost the last ball last year, and we always thought that the third year with an aging team would be difficult. And Dubai (UAE) has challenged us with a new set of requirements, ”said coach Stephen Fleming.
At last year’s auctions, CSK kept faith in the winning squad of home advantage, not releasing any of the old legs and at the same time adding another international player beyond his prime: Piyush Chawla. When Chawla’s offer began to increase, Fleming, getting flustered, made a fierce gesture to suggest they were out, but CEO KS Viswanathan urged him to continue. Viswanathan takes the salary calls at the auction table, with an ongoing phone call, presumably with the boss.
With CSK having adopted an experience-first strategy, all of India’s under-19 stars of recent seasons, from Shubhman Gill, Prithvi Shaw, Shivam Mavi, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Ravi Bishnoi to Yashasvi Jaiswal, are split among other franchises. Even Tamil Nadu Premier League finds like pacemaker T Natarajan and Basil Thampi and spinner Varun Chakravarthy are on other teams.
RAW OFFER FOR YOUNG GUNS
CSK’s young national artists have had few opportunities. Ruturaj Gaikwad, a young and exciting first-order hitter from Maharashtra who was asked to hit out of position in the middle order, missed twice before being eliminated. N Jagadeesan, the 24-year-old second goalkeeper in the squad, was knocked down after a 33 run in his only game, by a poor hit rate.
“There were some opportunities for the youngsters and maybe we didn’t see the kind of spark they could have given us to say, okay, push the seasoned kid and maybe make room for them,” Dhoni said.
The CSK skipper went on to speak of the need to give experienced men a fair step and avoid insecurity around moorings.
It contrasts with Dhoni’s views as a patron of India. It was he who urged the national selectors to seek fresh legs when India was taking baby steps in T20 cricket in 2007. Ironically, it is his older men’s team that are disappointing three-time IPL champion CSK.
Dhoni, who became the first man to play 200 IPL games on Monday, frequently spoke of going back to “process” to avoid undue pressure. That ‘process’ desperately needs an update though.
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