Dhoni points out faults in Chepauk pitch: The Chennai Super Kings captain sounded unhappy with the pitch during IPL 2019 season opener.
During the first match of the 12th season of the ongoing Indian Premier League between Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore at Chennai, Chennai Super Kings defeated Royal Challengers Bangalore by seven wickets to register their first victory of IPL 2019.
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In what was highly contrary numbers for an IPL match, 141 runs were scored in 34.5 overs for the loss of 13 wickets. A primary reason for the same was how the wicket played at the M. A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. The slowness of the wicket had made run-scoring difficult for both the sides.
Speaking during the post-match presentation ceremony, Chennai Super Kings captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni expressed disappointment at the nature of the pitch. Admitting that he was unaware about the pitch behaving in a way it did, Dhoni said that it surprised the whole team.
“No. Not really. I wasn’t sure about the wicket. We played a practice match on this wicket and it was a high scoring match, but usually in practice matches we score 30 runs more than a normal match. But we were really surprised by how slow the wicket was. It reminded me of a Champions League wicket in 2011 after we won the IPL,” Dhoni was quoted as saying.
MS Dhoni unhappy with the pitch
The veteran cricketer didn’t hesitate from admitting that the wicket will have to be worked upon for anything under 100 is really ‘low-scoring’. “The wicket definitely needs to be much better, even with dew it was spinning big. 80, 90, 100 is really low-scoring and if you have genuine spinners in your lineup you can create a lot of trouble,” Dhoni said.
Chennai might have won the first match, but similar pitches in the future have it in them to possess a danger for them as well. Addressing the same, Dhoni was clear in his words when he said that “this isn’t the pitch we are looking forward to”.
“We need to score runs as well, ours is a batting attack where batsmen like to play their shots and you can’t control the toss which means that we might have to bowl first in matches as well. Other teams have good spinners as well and this isn’t the pitch we are looking forward to,” the CSK skipper further said.
Harbhajan Singh, who wasn’t really expected to feature in this match, ended up winning the Man of the Match award for registering bowling figures of 4-0-20-3. Bowling his four overs on the trot, Harbhajan dismissed RCB captain Virat Kohli (6), all-rounder Moeen Ali (9) and batsman AB de Villiers (9).
Highlighting the communication with players, Dhoni mentioned that one slot is likely to shuffle between players depending on conditions and oppositions. “We have communicated it really well to the players as to when they’ll feature in and in which conditions. Harbhajan’s is one slot and we’ll shuffle it around. He would never mind bowling on such wickets,” Dhoni added.
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