IPL 2025: CSK’s middle muddle compounds flagging season
Home advantage was vital for the five-time IPL champions, but four losses in five games at Chepauk has left them bottom of the table
Mumbai: Season after season, the slow MA Chidambaram Stadium pitches were the perfect means for Chennai Super Kings to find momentum in their IPL campaigns. The sluggish, turning tracks at Chepauk have played no mean role in leaving rival teams anxious even before the first ball was bowled.
For the five-time champions, collecting most points at home was the template to success. The numbers say it all – overall 51 wins in 76 matches played at Chepauk. Even last season, CSK had a formidable home run, winning five of their seven games, although they narrowly missing the playoffs after finishing fifth in the points table.
This is a bleak season for CSK, however. The manner in which they have stumbled from one game to another – CSK are bottom of the table with just two wins from nine games and appear likely to end up way below the playoff spots – seem less about salvaging this season but more about planning a revamp of the once-formidable set-up.
On Friday, Sunrisers Hyderabad, who too have struggled this season, became the latest to breach CSK’s fortress, inflicting their fourth defeat at home in five games.
MS Dhoni blamed the middle-order after they were bowled out for 154, eventually losing by five wickets. CSK were 114/4 in the 13th over but lost the last six wickets for 40 runs. Dewald Brevis at No.5 scored a 25-ball 42. “He batted really well and we need something like that in the middle order,” Dhoni said at the presentation.
“Where we have slightly struggled is when the spinners come in (mid-innings), that’s when we need to either do it by batsmanship – pick your scoring areas – or try to play the big shot once the ball is in your area. That’s where we have been lacking. We have not been able to dominate or get runs against the spinners at a good pace in the middle… the middle overs are crucial – you have to get those extra 5 to 15 runs, especially if you get off to a good start.”
CSK owed their home domination to batters like Suresh Raina and Ambati Rayudu dominating in the middle overs when the visitors struggled to adapt. Raina and Rayudu would wait for the right time to attack, find boundaries. In the previous two seasons, Ajinkya Rahane served them well, but they could not find the right replacements in the last auction.
CSK are so short of options this season that Sam Curran came in at No.3 and Ravindra Jadeja at No.4 against SRH. Dhoni would recall that in their comeback season in 2018, CSK beat a strong SRH side four times in a row, including the final. In their first game, chasing to overhaul 178/6, Raina at No.3 and Rayudu at No.4 took the team home with seven wickets to spare scoring a 43-ball 54 and 37-ball 79* respectively. In 176 matches for CSK, Raina scored 4,687 runs at 32.32 (S/R 136.93) and Rayudu 1,932 runs (90 matches, Avg 29.72, S/R 129.32).
Of his 193 innings, Jadeja has batted mostly at Nos.5, 6 or 7. He has batted at No.3 only thrice and at No.4 only 13 times. England all-rounder Curran has batted mainly at No.5 and 6. He was batting at No.3 for the first time. CSK’s woes have been compounded because those they banked on in the middle-order – Deepak Hooda (29 runs in 4 matches) and Rahul Tripathi (55 runs in 5 matches) – haven’t got going and Shivam Dube (242 at 34.57), under pressure, hasn’t scored at his usual 150-plus strike-rate to make an impact.
CSK head coach Stephen Fleming said the picks in the November IPL auction were less than ideal. “It’s hard to say we’ve got it completely right. We’ve been looking over our performance and style of play in detail, and how the game is evolving. It’s not easy, and that’s why we’re proud of our record and that we’ve been able to be consistent for so long. It doesn’t take much for it to go another way. Other teams have got better, but we just haven’t got it right, so you take responsibility from the top down. That (auction) has to be an area where we need to reflect and say it wasn’t as good as what it could have been, but it’s also not perfect science,” he said at the post-match media conference.
