Did the Chennai Super Kings leave it too late to chase down the target of 183 runs against Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 match on Sunday? If MS Dhoni is in the middle, no chase is impossible, as history suggests, but a lot has changed over the last 2-3 years. Dhoni and Jadeja were in the middle for the last 4 overs, with CSK needing 54 runs. Not an impossible task from this position but the duo took their time to settle in.
Dhoni and Jadeja rotated strike and tried to hit some shots too but the chase quickly became a lot more tricky, with the team needing 39 runs from the final two overs to win the match. While no one in the cricket world is unaware of Dhoni’s tendency to take the chase deep, former West Indies cricketer Ian Bishop and India’s Test specialist Cheteshwar Pujara don’t think they should’ve done that against the Royals.
“One of the reasons I’ve understood in the past is that you put more pressure on the less experienced bowler, and that’s when you can deliver. But things have changed. Now, the bowlers are a lot smarter. Even someone like Sandeep Sharma is executing his yorkers well. Whereas five years down the line, if he was bowling the same over, he might have made a few more errors. And that’s where CSK have pressure,” Bishop said in a chat on ESPNCricinfo.
Pujara, on the other hand, feels CSK had the opportunity to accelerate when Dhoni and Jadeja started forming a partnership. The fact that they didn’t go hard made the target too big in the end.
“They left it a little longer. They could have accelerated when Jadeja and MS were batting, they could have gone hard a little earlier. But there are two sides to it. If one of them had gotten out, then things would have been different,” he said.
Pujara also urged CSK skipper Ruturaj Gaikwad to include New Zealand opening batter Devon Conway in the playing XI going forward.
“I felt that overall, in this game, CSK’s batting lineup was vulnerable. We have seen that there were not enough batters in the middle order who were batting well. So I think it’s high time that they look at a different batting combination because Jamie Overton hasn’t bowled well, Rahul Tripathi has been struggling a bit. So that’s where I think Conway should come in.”
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