MS Dhoni and CSK have ended the league campaign at the second spot and will be taking on SRH in qualifier 1 on Tuesday in Mumbai.
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A solid start to their campaign meant that CSK could experiment during the latter stages of the tournament and get all their players ready for the playoffs.
One such experiment was carried out by MS Dhoni today, when he decided to send in Deepak Chahar and Bhajju ahead of himself, Jadeja and Bravo.
KXIP and everyone around was left puzzled with this move of Dhoni’s. Maybe he was using them as pinch-hitters, maybe he wanted his lower middle-order to spend some time in the middle or maybe he just wanted to upset Ashwin’s plans for Dhoni and co.
In the post match presentation, Harsha Bhogle was quick to jump to the question about that weird CSK batting order as he wanted to pick Dhoni’s brains on what prompted him to do so.
Dhoni revealed that because the ball was swinging so much he wanted to put the bowlers off their lengths, seeing tail enders in front of them.
“If you see their bowling line-up, it was definitely swinging a bit more for Ankit. From a captain’s perspective, you want to take as many wickets upfront. So sending in Bhajji and Chahar creates chaos. The bowlers all of a sudden bowl yorkers and bouncers. When batsmen are batting, they stick to a good line and length, but against Bhajji and Chahar, they lose their line and lengths, instead of sticking to the plan. Plus Bhajji and Chahar could come in handy during the playoffs.” Dhoni said.
CSK will now travel to Mumbai for the first qualifier on Tuesday.
