After making a phenomenal start in this year’s IPL and winning two games on trott, the Chennai Super Kings have now lost two consecutive games in this IPL season.
However, after CSK’s second loss of the season, Chennai Super Kings newly appointed skipper, Ruturaj Gaikwad, is facing a lot of criticism from various former players, including Irfan Pathan and Michael Vaughan, who have questioned Ruturaj’s tactics.
Dhoni had a brilliant outing with the bat against the Delhi Capitals when he scored 37* of just 16 deliveries; however, in spite of such good form, Dhoni was not sent up in batting order.
In his interaction with Cricbuzz, Michael Vaughan said, “On the back of what he did in the last game, I’m amazed he did not come out to bat earlier. I can’t understand why he’s been out there for just three balls.”
Even former Indian all-rounder Irfan Pathan felt that Dhoni could have tackled bowlers like Jaydev Unadkat and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, looking at the slowness of the pitch.
Irfan Pathan wrote, Considering off-cutter planning in to the pitch and match up against Bhuvi and Unadkat, Dhoni, the right-hand batsman, should have batted up the order in this match vs. SRH.”
On the other hand, CSK’s skipper, Ruturaj, felt that they could not capitalize on the powerplay and last five overs with the bat, which resulted in their loss.
Gaikwad said, “”I think, to be honest, it was a slow pitch. They bowled well in the back-end, kept the game in control, and didn’t allow us to capitalize. I thought we did well in the beginning of the match, but they came back well later. It was a black soil pitch, so we expected the pitch to be slower, but it became slower and slower, and they used the boundary size well. We conceded too many in the batting PP—one dropped catch and one expensive over. Still, to take them to the 19th over was a great effort.
Gaikwad further added, “I thought anything around 170–175 would’ve been a good total for us. There was a bit of dew towards the end, but Moeen got the ball to spin even in the 15th and 16th overs. So I don’t think the pitch changed a lot during the course of the game.”
