Chennai Super Kings lost their second consecutive match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 season, this time to Sunrisers Hyderabad, on Friday.
The match required an MS Dhoni special at the end, but the wicket-keeper batter came out to bat with only three deliveries remaining. Former England captain Michael Vaughan found CSK skipper Ruturaj Gaikwad’s decision perplexing, claiming Dhoni should have been sent higher up the batting order to bat.
Even former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan questioned Ruturaj’s strategy, claiming CSK would have scored more runs if Dhoni had come out earlier.
Dhoni was brilliant with the bat in the Super Kings’ last match against the Delhi Capitals, scoring 16 runs off 37 balls.
However, he came out to bat against the Sunrisers with only three deliveries remaining in the innings. In a Cricbuzz chat, Vaughan said he couldn’t understand the decision.
“Given what he did in the last game, I’m surprised he didn’t bat earlier. “I don’t understand why he’s been out there for only three balls,” he said.
Even former Irfan Pathan believed Dhoni could have handled SRH bowlers Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jaydev Undakat more effectively if he had come out to bat sooner.
“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,” he wrote on the occasion of CSK’s six-wicket
Speaking about the game, CSK captain Ruturaj admitted that the team struggled to score in the last five overs and gave up too many runs in the powerplay.
“To be honest, I believe it was a slow pitch. They bowled well in the back end, kept the game under control, and did not allow us to capitalize.
I thought we did well at the start of the match, but they recovered well later. We expected the pitch to be slower because it was black soil, but it gradually became slower, and they made good use of the boundary size.
We gave up too many runs in the batting power play, including one dropped catch and one expensive over. Still, getting them to the 19th over was a tremendous effort.
“I thought anything between 170 and 175 would have been a good total for us.” There was some dew near the end, but Moeen got the ball to spin even in the 15th and 16th over.
So I don’t think the pitch changed significantly throughout the game,” he said.
