During the match between Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, the captain of Chennai Super Kings, MS Dhoni achieved a huge milestone of becoming the first player in the Indian Premier League’s history to captain a franchise in 200 matches.To make this achievement more memorable Chennai Super Kings honoured him before the match against Rajasthan Royals.While talking about his journey in the Indian Premier League, MS Dhoni expressed his gratitude towards Chennai and thanked the franchise for all the support and love over the years.”There is always a curiosity to know how a franchise operates. It is a completely new environment. It was also the first time that you were going to share the dressing room with foreign players. And you did not know how they were,” said Dhoni.IPL 2008 was the first time in the history of cricket where Indian players were going to share the same dressing for months.
Chennai Super Kings had purchased the former Australian opener Matthew Hayden who is counted among the most dangerous batsmen of all time. MS Dhoni shared an incident and said that he was scared if Hayden would come into the dressing room and start hurling abuses based on the image he had formed from playing international cricket for Australia.Talking about this first experience with Hayden, Dhoni said,”Take Matthew Hayden for example, we always thought that he would come and start abusing left right and centre. But it was very interesting that before our first match against Kings XI Punjab, Matthew Hayden took the initiative in the team meeting while discussing strategy. The first thing he said was that he would take Brett Lee on. I did not understand a lot at the time and asked what he meant.
Hayden said that I would walk down the track and meet Brett Lee halfway. On the next day, he repeated the exact thing in the first or second ball of the game. That was the kind of approach he had. So it was very interesting.”