IPL: Captain MS Dhoni wasn’t only one who struggled, says CSK coach Stephen Fleming

According to head coach Stephen Fleming, the unusually slow innings of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) captain Ms Dhoni on Monday against Delhi Capitals (DC) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 can be explained by the difficult conditions that were offered at the Dubai International Stadium, Fleming said.

Dhoni managed just 18 runs from 27 balls, which is his slowest innings in the history of IPL (minimum 25 balls faced), as CSK ended up with 136 runs for the loss of five wickets on the scoreboard batting first. Dhoni struck at 66.6, playing 10 dot balls. He failed to hit a single six or a boundary in a knock that once again highlighted his lack of match practice.

Fleming pointed out the fact that even DC could only chase down the total with three wickets and two balls to spare.

“Well, he (Dhoni) wasn’t the only one who struggled,” Fleming said in the post-match press conference. “It was a difficult day for strokeplay. When 137 (136) is almost enough, I think it was a tough wicket to score big on in terms of the big shots. So both teams struggled with that towards the end of the innings. Sometimes you set your sights too high, [want] too many, and probably we were only 10-15 runs short of having a match-winning score.

“So, the difficulty at the moment is to assess what the conditions are in all three different grounds and, batting first, getting a score that is par or just above. It was no lack of intent, it was just we had to stabilise after a couple of mistakes and then we were reasonably well-placed for 150. The other thing was their attack bowled very well in the last five overs. They were very smart, so it was tough going,” said the former New Zealand captain.

This was CSK’s second consecutive defeat, after they lost to Rajasthan Royals by seven wickets. The loss on Monday cost them the top spot on the league table but both DC and CSK had qualified for the playoffs. Fleming said he would rather have the defeats rather than in the next stage of the tournament.

“I’d rather have two defeats now than in the two semi-finals, if I ever had a wish list. Today was good, today was scrappy and I think there were a lot of mistakes on both sides. Sometimes, when you’ve qualified, I know there are one or two (things) that we were trying hard for… and things do change a little bit,” he said.

“We try to work very hard on keeping the intensity. We’re on the back of three games in five days and a bit of travel, so there were probably clumsy mistakes from us, which was the most disappointing aspect, but in terms of the competition one of the key things is rebounding. Second on the table [with] a chance to get to the top two is still a positive position, but we need to just maintain our intensity or get the flow and rhythm that we had before these two games,” said Fleming.