Captain Dhoni returns

After six losses in eight games, Ravindra Jadeja relinquishes Chennai Super Kings, captaincy giving the responsibility back to MSD

MS Dhoni will once again be the man at the helm of the Chennai Super Kings as they take on Sunrisers Hyderabad in an IPL league game at the MCA Stadium here on Sunday.

Just eight games in the season, Ravindra Jadeja decided to relinquish the captaincy to focus on his game, according to a statement from the franchise.

It wasn’t a great start to Jadeja’s captaincy regime, as the team has lost six of the eight games in IPL 2022 so far.

It will be an interesting battle between two sides that have had quite a different run.

With 10 points from eight games, Sunrisers have a genuine chance of making it to the play-offs. With just two wins from eight games, Chennai’s chances of making it to the final four look very slim. And every loss from here on will make it practically impossible for one of the tournament’s most successful franchises, to make the cut.

The Pune pitch has showed signs of slowing down in the past two games. Totals of 144 and 153 have been defended comfortably here in the last two games. Kagiso Rabada, who took four wickets for the Punjab Kings against Lucknow Super Giants on Friday, described the pitch as ‘sticky’. 

Tricky hard lengths

The hard lengths are the ones that batsmen have found difficult to score off in the past two games here. And the batsmen who have found it tough against the hard length here include the likes of Jos Buttler, Sanju Samson, KL Rahul, Faf du Plessis, Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli.

That makes this battle even more interesting. Scoring runs is definitely not impossible here, as Riyan Parag showed for Rajasthan Royals against the RCB. But that requires spending some time, reading the pitch and picking the right balls for the right strokes.

Sunrisers clearly have an upper hand in the bowling department, with Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Marco Jansen both having genuine ability to swing the new ball up front. It will be interesting to see how Jansen recovers from the hammering he received at the hands of Gujarat Titans, a game that the latter won off the final ball.

Then the Sunrisers have the raw pace of Umran Malik, clearly one of the stories of the tournament so far. T Natrajan’s ability to bowl at the death and Washington Sundar’s economical off-spin makes it a good package, especially for the conditions.

CSK want a good start

Chennai will be hoping for a good start at the top from their local boy Ruturaj Gaikwad. The opener scored a half-century for CSK in their only game here so far, and the CSK team management would be hoping for an encore.

They also have the left-arm pacer Mukesh Chaudhary, who isn’t exactly a local, but has been residing and practicing in Pune for the past eight years. He has played a lot of cricket on this ground, and his knowledge of the conditions could become handy.
 
With all his variations, Dwayne Bravo could be a tough customer to handle on this pitch, and it will be interesting to see how he is used by the CSK skipper Ravindra Jadeja. The West Indian has been asked to bowl in the second half of the innings more often than not, but it will be interesting to see if the CSK tactics change, should one of the Sunrisers batsman gets going early on.

121
No. of IPL matches MS Dhoni has led CSK to victory, in 204 games. His win percentage is 59.60

6
No. of titles MS Dhoni has won for CSK—four IPL triumphs and two Champions League T20 wins

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