Conundrums, crises and catastrophes
A CSK season that nobody had ever imagined, yet isn’t surprising
Mumbai Indians can surely be recognised as most successful IPL franchise, but over the years if consistency is considered, CSK has been phenomenal. Their impeccable record of making it to playoffs every year, their epic comeback in 2018, the only IPL champion who had defended their title successfully — there are so many accolades that define CSK better than their outstanding numbers. They also have a huge fan base, and how many stay with them at the end of this season, will be the litmus of their loyalty.
Over the years, CSK has delivered on most occasions, this is the first time they are experiencing this — the rock bottom. There are a lot of questions, which we keep hearing too often, “Did they bank too much on experience, and completely ignored the energy young guns bring to the team”, “Where was the intent in CSK campaign”, “Why doesn’t Dhoni step aside and make way for youngsters”. Whenever a tournament goes bad, questions are sure asked. Some of the points are valid as well, while some just blatant exaggerations.
To start with what went wrong this season, the first and foremost factor is auctions. CSK has always been a team that backs their players, retains them and for most of the tournament plays with the same 12–13. But this year the team they had was a team that wanted to play 7 of their encounters at the Chepauk.
They clearly don’t have a team for the venues of UAE. This year IPL we have already seen, how effective the tearaway quicks have been. Rabada, Nortje, Bumrah, Boult, Shami, Saini, Archer, Lockie — all have been great for their teams. Chennai doesn’t have a single bowler who can do that. They have Josh Hazlewood and Lungi Ngidi who can clock 140 clicks regularly but they haven’t played a lot of matches to make impact.
Their bowling reserve is full with Spin options- Karn Sharma, Piyush Chawla, R Sai Kishore, Mitch Santner, Imran Tahir, Ravindra Jadeja and they had Raina and Bhajji to go with these. Clearly they were rooting for spin friendly conditions where CSK could get the luxury to play with smaller totals. When the totals are smaller their batsmen get a little bit more time to settle, which suits their style of play.
CSK over the years have relied very heavily on Bravo in the death overs. But Bravo has been fragile of late and it wouldn’t be wrong to put him the bracket of Mitch Marsh and Dre Russ. If a player who has very defined role, and team relies on that, and that player is coming unfit in the tournament, then you are already at a disadvantage.
The second place where they have been found wanting, is the presence of a natural aggressor in their top order. In fact Sam Curran was promoted to that role, so that they could score a bit more in the power plays. In earlier seasons they have had some great openers, Mathew Hayden, Dwayne Smith, Michael Hussey, Brendan McCullum and Shane Watson. Even their make shift openers like Faf and Rayudu last season had done well. So three of the above players are still playing for CSK, then that should be good news, right? But it is not. Watson on his day wins matches, but those days have become too sporadic. This would still not matter if they had a solid number 3 like Raina. But they didn’t have his services this year. When Raina has played worst, he had scored 374 runs, which is not bad considering their batting order today.
Even when Faf has played brilliantly, he hasn’t had too many partners to accompany him. Had Watson or Rayudu also had an IPL with 350+ runs, things could have been different.
When Raina had withdrawn from the IPL, they had the opportunity to sign somebody as his replacement. But they didn’t, citing the reason that they had plenty of options in the squad itself. Let’s see all the options they had. Murali Vijay and Jagdeeshan are openers, and if they play, that means one of Faf or Watson should play at no 3. This is clearly not a problem because they already did that when Sam Curran was promoted. The problem lies with the strike rates of these players.
Jagdeeshan back in 2016 when TNPL began, introduced himself as a dashing opener. He has been on the bench for a couple of years, after getting picked up in auction in 2018. Eventually his stats after 2018 in domestic seasons have also declined. However, the young man hasn’t really got a lot of chances to prove himself, barring the solitary game against RCB, and he did okay.
Murali Vijay has seemed completely off-color, in the games he had played. So considering him in the 11 even for the remaining matches wouldn’t make sense. The biggest letdown has been Rituraj Gaewad who had a great domestic season, scored a lot of runs there, and was backed on social media as well, as a great substitute for Raina’s role. His campaign was thrown off track with, him getting infected with coronavirus. He had to miss a few games in the start and could never really get enough practice before the start of the tournament as he was quarantined. So even if Gaewad and Jagdeeshan haven’t really played brilliantly, they should still be backed by the team management.
They are already running out of options and since there are no auctions before the next IPL as well, they need the young guns to fire, or else 2021 would be yet another year of disappointments and diminished returns.
What they have also missed terribly is the flourish at the end. The big man, MSD himself hasn’t had the best of IPL. Having retired from international cricket, it was expected that he will have a good IPL, given that he can have a much clearer head while focussing on domestic/franchise cricket only. He has always been questioned for his tactic of taking the game too deep and then off late not being able to finish them successfully. This year, the intent can clearly be seen, where he has tried to hit the bowlers earlier and not wait till the very end, but it hasn’t come good either. With MSD not performing well, the other names in the lower order have been Kedar Jadhav and Ravindra Jadeja.
While Jadeja has been good, about Kedar Jadhav - it can be safely concluded that he is playing his last IPL. Seeing him struggle in the middle, is a pain to watch.
Jadhav was hailed as a utility player who started as a keeper batsman, and in the later years he was even used as a part time bowling option. Kedar didn’t bowl this year, so that part of his game is already gone. What remains are his batting numbers? In 8 matches, he got 5 opportunities in which he scored 62 runs at the strike rate of 93.93. These are some terrible numbers especially when your team is in dire need of a finisher.
The average age of the squad is 31 for CSK, the oldest in the tournament. A direct impact of this reflected in their fielding. So many drop catches, and if the proverb “Catches win matches” is to be believed, then it isn’t a surprise that they lost so many. Even their ground fielding hasn’t been good, they have leaked 20 runs easily in every match they have played. Even Jadeja has been found guilty of misfields and butter palms, a lot of times this season.
The second direct consequence was lack of quick singles. There are a lot of batsmen who start slow. Even in this IPL, there have been a lot of times when Virat or Warner or Rahul, the prolific run getters have had 100–110 strike rate in the first 20–25 balls they have faced. So slow start is never a problem, what works for them is the low dot ball count. Even when they are playing slow, they try to rotate the strike, and take quick singles, convert ones to twos. This reduces the pressure amounted due to dot balls. As well as doesn’t allow the bowler to settle in and trap a batsman as per the set plan. But on so many occasions you could see the age of the players in the strides they made.
Even MSD has been getting run out on more occasions now. You could see runs getting dried up. You could see a batsman like Faf or Jadeja getting stranded on non striker’s end due to that. You could see Jagdeeshan trying so hard to make Rayudu run his twos, while Rayudu simply denied them in lethargy. You could even see the Chennai dugout, a relatively calm think-tank getting all animated, whenever fielders got slow to ball, and opposition batsman had sneaked in an extra run.
However good your captain be, the mistakes committed on the auction table cannot be rectified on the field.
What can be done now? Is there any chance to qualify for playoffs?
They already have lost 7 out of 10 games. They would need to win 4 out of 4 to reach 14 points and hope other teams loose. Theoretically that is possible. But seeing the body language of the team, the lack of moral — hoping for a miracle just seems too unreasonable.
They should, however make some whole scale changes. Get Faf and Jagdeeshan to open, so that the youngster can play in his natural spot. Draft in Gaekwad at number 3 or vice versa with Gaewad to open and Jagdeeshan at number 3, Rayudu and MS can follow after that. Then the lower order should play Jadeja- who has been in good nic, Curran and Santner — who can also bat a little and hit shots when needed. Thakur and Chahar can be the Indian seamers followed by Lungi/Hazlewood, to provide that extra pace, when needed.
So where does CSK go from here? Is this the end of an era?
It sure seems like that. Remember the day when CSK walked out in 2018 after the two year ban, amidst a jam packed Chepauk and the crowd chanting Thala… Thala… For every IPL fan, even if you’re not a Chennai supporter, that is exactly how you’d want to remember this incredible league as. That was the pure embodiment of loyalty, those are the moments that cricketers live for. This squad of some very extraordinary gentlemen have had very good times in IPL, but the time has come to move beyond them. And as harsh as it sounds, nobody can deny that it is inevitable.
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