- Tuesday, April 15, 2025
CSK have been invincible at ‘Fortress Chepauk’ over the years, but this season the ‘Yellow Brigade’ is yet to open its account at home
By: India Weekly
MAHENDRA SINGH DHONI has urged the curators at the Chepauk to prepare better surfaces that can give his batters the confidence to play their shots like they did in Lucknow, as he doesn’t want the Chennai Super Kings to play timid cricket.
Dhoni’s 11-ball 26 was instrumental in CSK’s win over Lucknow Super Giants after the five-time champions snapped their four-match losing streak, which also included three defeats at home. Chasing a target of 167, CSK won with three balls to spare with a markedly better batting performance.
CSK have been invincible at ‘Fortress Chepauk’ over the years but the ‘Yellow Brigade’ is yet to open its account at home this season.
“One of the reasons could be that the Chennai wicket is slightly on the slower side. When we have played away from home, the batting unit has done slightly better,” Dhoni, who won his first player of the match award in six years, said in the post-match presentation.
“Maybe we need to play on wickets that are slightly better so that it’ll give the batters confidence to play their shots. You don’t want to play timid cricket,” the ‘Captain Cool’ said.
Dhoni admitted that his batters need to fulfil their roles and responsibilities better.
“As a batting unit, we can do better. Roles and responsibilities – that’s what we talk about. If you get off to a good start, and you’re someone who can play through the innings, then why not. I think he batted really well today.”
He also agreed that CSK’s Powerplay performance has been an issue in the past five games.
“If you see the powerplay, whether it was the combination or the conditions, we were struggling with the ball. And then we weren’t able to get the start we wanted as a batting unit. Also the fall of wickets. We keep losing wickets at the wrong time to some extent.”
In fact, R Ashwin often bowled in Powerplays with not much success during this edition.
“We were putting too much pressure on Ash. He was bowling two overs in the first six (overs). We made changes and this looks like a better attack. As a bowling unit we’ve done well.”
Dhoni felt that in a tournament like IPL, losing a few games on the bounce can make comebacks a bit tough.
“It’s good to win a game. When you play a tournament like this, you want to win games. Unfortunately the (earlier) matches didn’t go our way for whatever reasons. There can be lots of reasons.
“It gives confidence to the whole team and helps us improve in areas we want to improve. We all knew that when it doesn’t come your way in cricket, God makes it very tough, and it was a tough game.”
He also said in lighter vein that he didn’t know why the adjudicators zeroed in on him to win the Player of The Match award.
“Even today I was like – ‘why are they giving me the award?'” Noor (Ahmed) bowled really well.”
The left-arm spinner bowled 13 balls in his four overs, stifling rival captain Rishabh Pant. (PTI)
