I have tried as much as possible to resist my urge to write about IPL because, first, I do not consider IPL as a tournament and second, T20 is not proper cricket. However, the events over the last couple of days has made me want to write about IPL and especially, about the Chennai Super Kings and Dhoni’s comment.
Unchanged team for a longtime
Chennai Super Kings is a team that has been captained by MS Dhoni and MS Dhoni alone from the time of IPL’s inception. It was back in the year 2008. With the exception of a couple of years when CSK was banned over fixing charges, Dhoni has led the side in 10 IPL editions. It is a very long period for anyone to be the captain of any team. Leave alone cricket. It seems that Srinivasan, the owner of CSK, does not want to make anyone the captain of CSK. He probably wants continuity in the team.
He probably has a lot of faith in a few players who have played for CSK for a longtime but in this case, I think his faith is misplaced. Srinivasan failed to change the coach either. It is still Stephen Fleming. He maybe a good coach but certainly beyond 5-7 years, he would have had very little to offer. It is not a surprise to see CSK’s horrendous run in the on-going IPL. It is not the number of defeats that matter but the manner of those defeats.
Immobile players
CSK is a team that has the most number of aged players. Dhoni & Watson are 39. Faf, Rayudu & Kedar Jadav are 35 or above. Imran Tahir is 41 though he hasn’t played a game yet. Piyush Chawla and Karn Sharma are relatively young but just a look at them, one can easily tell how unfit they are. Piyush Chawla looks like a pumpkin and Karn Sharma looks like an overgrown potato. Watson looks like a WWE fighter than a cricket player. No team can hope to win anything with such an aged team.
None of them can run quickly and as a result, rotation of strike takes a sound beating. The batsmen either will score a boundary or a six or just play dot balls. Watson, Dhoni & Kedar Jadav are incapable of hitting the ball to the boundary and they are incapable of rotating the strike. Dhoni’s struggle against decent spin is a well known fact in international cricket. So much so that whenever Dhoni walks in, the opponent will employ one spinner and sometimes even a couple from both the ends.
This ensures that Dhoni will end up wasting a lot of deliveries. In T20, this is magnified manifold because of the less number of overs. It actually means that either CSK will end with 30-40 runs less than par or will not be able to chase scores in the range of 7 per over. To make matters worse, none of old men will be able to cover the ground which means the opponent will always score 15-20 runs more than they should have. With such severe shortcomings in his team, I really do not understand what made Dhoni to utter such nonsense comments like the one after their loss against Rajasthan Royals.
Dhoni’s stupid comments
“This season, we were not really there. And, also, there were a few chances to the youngsters and maybe we didn’t see the kind of spark that they could have given us to say, okay, push [out] the experienced guy and maybe make some space for them (youngsters).”
Does he realise that out of the 3 games won by CSK in this season so far, one was because of Sam Curran who is 22 years old? Srikkanth has rightly lashed out at Dhoni. Srikkanth is someone who will never say anything against the established players. He more than worships Dhoni and for such a person to come out and say what he said, brings a lot of attention on the so-called Dhoni intelligence.
Krishnamachari Srikkanth’s comments about Dhoni’s unwarranted comments
“I will never accept what Dhoni is saying about this process,” Srikkanth told Star Sports Tamil. “This process he keeps talking about is meaningless. You keep talking about process, process… but the process of selection itself is wrong.”
“What is Dhoni’s deal? He says Jagadeesan doesn’t have spark, but does ‘scooter’ Jadhav have that spark? This is ridiculous. I will not accept this answer today. All this talk of process, and Chennai’s tournament itself is over.
“Dhoni now says that since the pressure is off, he’ll give the youngsters a chance. Come on, yaar. I don’t understand this rubbish about the process at all. What spark didn’t he see in Jagadeesan? What spark did he see in Jadhav and Piyush Chawla?
Nothing more needs to be said
Conclusion
It is a known fact that Dhoni has always cared about process rather than results. When he was the captain of the Indian cricket team, he laid so much importance on process that results took a backseat. This resulted in such humiliations in England & Australia repeatedly. If a process takes beyond a certain time, it means that that process has failed. It is a pity Dhoni never realised this when he was the Indian captain. Now he is back repeating the same while being the captain of CSK. It is time Dhoni realises that he is the biggest drawback for CSK and he must gracefully leave the field.
Srinivasan must realise that continuity is alright but if the players are not able to pull their weight, it is time to let them go. A sportsperson’s tenure is always finite and beyond a certain age, they will not be able to contribute. I do respect Srinivasan’s appreciation of loyalty despite being the managing director of a private company whose only motive is profit and in this case, trophy but it is time revamp the team entirely. He will have to bring in quite a few youngsters and a captain who is not that old. It is time CSK gets a new spark to challenge the other teams in next year’s IPL.