It’s not the very first time I’ve seen a Chennai Super Kings (CSK) side struggle in this fashion. Neither it’s the first time for them to become the first side to get disqualified out of the IPL playoffs race. All of these happen in 2020. But that was totally a different season.
In the monsoon season, you tend to make the mistake of not getting out of your home without an umbrella once or twice or at best thrice. But it can’t happen always. You would be a fool to do so. Not using intent in the shortest format was a wrong decision in the Covid year, but to repeat it five years later, despite finding the medicine was a crime.
CSK losing the home pride
It’s funny how they discovered the lost intent during the 2021 and 2023 seasons in small contributions from the renowned players in different basics and suddenly found success. However, they lost the note. For me, 2020 or even 2022 were not as hard as this edition has been, watching this franchise, because they didn’t play any of their game at their fortress, the home ground MA Chidambaram Stadium.
You pick up a squad in the league for a season based on your home conditions, and there is nothing wrong with it. Carrying a win percentage of over 60 at home is the cheat code for CSK for a long time but not this year for sure.
CSK have crashed out of #IPL2025 after losing 5 games at home for the first time in an IPL season! pic.twitter.com/xwVSiMbytn
— ThePoppingCrease (@PoppingCreaseSA) May 1, 2025
When one of my friends, minutes after the mega auction last year, called me and wanted a review of the Chennai side for the 2025 season, I didn’t hesitate much to calculate that they would win five out of the seven group-stage games at home and would need around three more out of the rest seven to get among the top four. Well, that was one of his rare bad days in mathematics.
Going into the seventh and final group-stage game at home against Rajasthan Royals, Chennai has just one victory in six attempts, and that one win came in the opening affair of the season against Mumbai, and believe me, that was them trying to lose the game at any cost. Five successive defeats at Chepauk in one IPL season or even two seasons together? Nah, never ever that happened in this franchise’s history of the game. That’s where they didn’t only lose the game but also lost the pride by a lion’s share.
Hold your emotions and be practical as your captain seeks
I saw a few of MS Dhoni’s, the replacement captain for CSK after Ruturaj Gaikwad’s mysterious injury, was taken in the wrong way. Few thought that MS sending a message to his batters to pick the right ball and hitting the shots after watching a few balls in the powerplay means he is an old-school captain.
For them, let me clear you sometimes. What’s MS known for in all these past years with the bat? He is known as someone who has been calm and composed in pressure situations and always felt that it was not too late to do the job. His message was to not go for shots that you, as a batter, are not confident of and look to find gaps for boundaries rather than sixes.
Another aspect was when he called for some practicality from CSK for the rest of the season when they lost the Wankhede game against Mumbai. They were not officially out of the IPL 2025 but were walking on a rope. Most of them came up with an example of how RCB turned the table with a 1% chance. It’s a different story altogether.
You have to be practical in life to go ahead. Being emotional won’t help you to grow rapidly. That’s the sad truth. Ravindra Jadeja didn’t perform with the bat, and now it’s time you look forward to the next generation. There was no point in going after Ashwin with that huge price, and I accepted my mistake of thinking that the veteran could do the job for the side like his old days.
The question in everyone’s mind is when will he retire? He isn’t Ashwin; he is… yes, you know who!!! CSK needs to go beyond MS, and I am telling it again, MS isn’t the reason for the reason. He is one of the slightest reasons for the struggle. In two victories, MS has delivered in his own against Lucknow on a surface where batting was hard even for a set batter.
But do I want MS to stretch after this season? Yes, I do, because you get replacements in the mini-auction. But I don’t want him to keep in all games. There will be a requirement when they need to build someone younger in that position. They haven’t yet done the job in the last so many years.
Grow your side among the set players
What should CSK do from here on? They should cut the 25-member squad to 16 to 18 and manage the rest of the season around those. Ayush Mhatre and Shaik Rasheed looked good, along with Dewald Brevis.
They didn’t use Jamie Overton rightly. He isn’t Craig, Jamie’s young brother. Jamie bats at the top order and bowls in the middle overs, and Chennai is doing the exact opposite.
I was never a cheerleader for the teams I support, neither India nor this franchise in the IPL. This is the poorest season in my eyes for the franchise and I can’t digest some of their defeats this season.
But you, as a team, still have an unfinished job. You know what’s that? Every time my friends (mostly MI fans) start to crack a joke on Chennai, I would come up with a reply that at least they didn’t finish with the wooden spoon in the league’s history. Make sure I can stretch that statement for another 12 months at least.
