On Saturday night, the Chennai Super Kings will play their venerable rivals, the Mumbai Indians, at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium. In their first game of the year, CSK lost to the defending champion Gujarat Titans, but they rebounded well this week to overcome Lucknow Super Giants by 12 runs.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the team’s skipper, stole the show with two spectacular sixes against Mark Wood in the game’s penultimate over, despite CSK’s great overall performance. When he came on to bat, the 1st innings only had 5 balls to spare and Dhoni smacked back-to-back 2 sixes in a row but got out in the 3rd ball.
Dhoni’s batting reflexes did drastically deteriorate over the past few years, and since quitting international cricket in 2020, the wicket keeper-batter has only been available for the Chennai Super Kings in the IPL. However, the CSK captain continues to be a shrewd tactician, and the team’s former batter Robin Uthappa detailed how “annoying” it was to face off against Dhoni’s team during the IPL.
"The noise when THALA Dhoni came to bat and hit those 2 sixes were definitely the loudest I have played infront of" – Mark Wood ⚡️ pic.twitter.com/EIM2PXxHoW
— Arnav (@Dhoniesque_) April 6, 2023
Uthappa also mentioned that Dhoni could play mind games and there was no one better than him at it. “He plays with batsmen’s mind. He not just forces the batsmen to think differently, he forces the bowlers to think differently as well. He puts the bowler in a situation where he feels that he need to take that wicket-taking option.”
The 37-year-old said that Dhoni has such match awareness that he would ask his bowlers to accurately bowl at places where the batters do not enjoy playing.
“When I played against CSK, I used to be very annoyed. I was very irritated with him. (Narrating an incident playing on-screen) He didn’t have a fine leg for Hazlewood, so I knew he will bowl to this angle (outside-off). I tried getting a boundary there (deep point), and got out. He forces you to play in areas wher eyou’re not used to playing.” – Uthappa concluded via Jio Cinema.
