IPL: Now facing the exit door, the Chennai Super Kings have plenty to ponder

The Dhoni conundrum is their biggest headache, but the franchise also needs a new shopping list before the next mini auction

An exasperated M.S. Dhoni with Sam Curran on 30 April
An exasperated M.S. Dhoni with Sam Curran on 30 April
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Gautam Bhattacharyya

It’s a no-brainer that any team facing an early exit from the IPL needs to go back to the drawing board before next season — but the problem is not that simple with the Chennai Super Kings.

Their unstinting backing of the superhuman abilities, captaincy and vision of one man is now under severe scrutiny, while there seems to be a desperate need for new direction from the support staff.

The question is: Who will bell the cat?

There are still four games to go for the Yellow Shirts and assuming they win all of those here on out, the five-time champions still finish with a maximum of 12 points and avoid being last in the table.

That will certainly not suffice for a team with such a strong legacy — it’s a shock that it will miss making the final two years in a row. And to think that it was once a running jest that the IPL was a tournament where seven other teams (in the erstwhile eight-time format) vied with each other to play the CSKs in the final.

The biggest quandary before India Cements Limited, owners of the franchise, now is determining the fate of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. But then, it’s not their only problem.

Replying to TV pundit Danny Morrison’s question at the toss against Punjab Kings about whether he would come back as a player next year, Dhoni said with a derisive smile:  ‘’I don’t know, I’m coming for the next game.’’

Each time that question has been put to him since 2023, when Dhoni had the best opportunity to walk into the golden sunset after leading the team to their fifth crown, Captain Cool’s replies have been open-ended.

The rumour mills were active again earlier this season when his parents made a rare appearance in one of the games, but he soon talked it down in a YouTube chat, saying he had no retirement plans as of now and wanted to take it year by year.   

The question will come up again in the remaining matches, though.

Reports say that demand for tickets for the Kolkata Knight Riders versus CSK game at Eden next week has already soared — in anticipation of this being Dhoni’s ‘last’ appearance in Kolkata. Yet everyone with an inside track — from senior members of the support staff like long-serving coach Stephen Fleming to TV pundits both Indian and overseas —  is so much in awe of him that no one is willing to raise a direct query.


There was hence a welcome dose of pragmatism when Shaun Pollock, the South African great, told Cricbuzz: ‘’I don’t think (CSK needs Dhoni the captain next season). He is having to step in because Gaikwad is injured.

“He has nothing more to achieve. He has won as much as anyone.

“It’s gonna be down to what he wants. Because of the legacy he has left and the impact he has had on the franchise, they have kind of given him free rein to be the one who makes the call: ‘We will wait until you have decided you have had enough.’

“Will that change? I don’t know. Would the owners have a word with him? We’ve tried to predict this for so long and now we sound like a broken record. We can’t get to the bottom of it. But yeah, I would be very surprised if he were there next year.’’

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Having said that, one has to admit that there are several areas where the squad needs a major overhaul, above and beyond Dhoni.

The openers need to shed their old-school cricketing ways and just fire the way Shane Watson and Faf du Plessis once did.

The middle order needs to take more accountability for boosting totals as well as chasing them.

The pace attack needs more muscle than a Khaleel Ahmed and an Anshul Khamboj can provide unsupported.

Matheesa Pathirana, the young Sri Lankan clone of Lasith Malinga who served the Super Kings so well in the last cycle, is now being picked up easily by the batters. The CSKs need a leader for their pace attack — much like a Josh Hazlewood (Royal Challengers Bangalore) or Mitchell Starc (Delhi Capitals).

Matheesa Pathirana may have lost some of his bite with an action change
Matheesa Pathirana may have lost some of his bite with an action change
BCCI

Eric Simmons, the South African bowling coach for the CSKs, felt that Pathirana’s action change may have made him lose some bite. “I think it’s been quite well documented that there was a bit of an action change. But I think he’s pretty much back to where he was and just in terms of the height of his arm on a reasonably consistent basis. I’m not sure that he’s less accurate, but I think batters are playing him a lot better. We can certainly see a trend in the way that batters are playing against him, particularly against Mumbai the other day. The technique that they’re using, they understand what his plans and what he does,”  Simmons added.

With benefit of hindsight, though, it has to be admitted that their troubles began with a debatable auction, where they invested too much on someone like Ravi Ashwin for possibly the emotional quotient alone.

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