Yellove: CSK fans and life after Dhoni...
Conversations with true fans reveal that Dhoni’s name is as a part of a collective whose welfare matters most, writes Sharda Ugra
Relief would have swept through the CSK camp on Monday night after MS Dhoni marshalled his team to only their second win of the season. Yet they remain at the bottom of the table, have hit the fewest sixes in the competition[1] and are the only team scoring at eight an over. (KKR are second lowest at 9.05). After the win in Lucknow, their management’s tiptoeing around Dhoni will be ignored for a bit with Dhoni’s own brand getting fresh tanks of oxygen.
This CSK-Dhoni umbilical cord looks massively tangled. From the outside, it’s not clear who’s at which end: is Dhoni is attached to CSK or CSK to Dhoni? One of the market theories is that CSK depends on Brand Dhoni because Brand Dhoni is bigger than Brand CSK. Even though the 17th Brand Finance IPL 2024 valuation report has CSK as the most valuable franchise $122m. Ahead of Mumbai Indians but does that mean Dhoni is… never mind.
A Chennai friend says that CSK without Dhoni means a steep drop in ticket sales and empty stands at Chepauk. Surely not in a city like Chennai whose ‘knowledgeable’ crowds have been memed to immortality? There’s got to be more to CSK than just being a previously non-stop now start-stutter-stop-restart engine for Brand Dhoni.
What do CSK fans make of their troubling season? Is there no life after Dhoni? Would ticket sales really drop? When the club were banned for two seasons, a CSK Fan Club was set up in 2017, Prabhu Damodharan, who is the president, says “to show support and bring together fellow fans.” They ran the SaveCSK signature campaign that got 13000 signatures and was sent to BCCI vice-president Rajeev Shukla.
Damodharan, 46, has no time for the post Dhoni empty Chepauk scenario. Chepauk, he is convinced, will continue to be full. He explains where the real anxiety comes from: a drop in black-marketed tickets. These days, “two thirds maybe even three fourths” of Chepauk is full of fans, “who come in fear of missing out on Dhoni.”
The tickets, Damodharan points out, “allotted to sponsors/ clubs end up with ones (people) of influence or (those) who come to witness a spectacle.” Online tickets “are grabbed by computer-savvy freaks” who then sell it at black market rates, “leaving fans without tickets.” Currently many are cashing in at “3x 4x black ticket prices.” Post-Dhoni, the prices will stabilise and “go to genuine fans.” He says, “I don’t think CSK needs to sell tickets with MS. Chepauk always has a full crowd for any cricket match.”
The change in the Chepauk crowds was also noticed by Maanya Manikandan, 24, a stem content research analyst and diehard CSK fan from age 9. “Obviously Dhoni was very special to us but it was never about Dhoni being bigger than the team. CSK is not just about Dhoni.”
This Dhoni-centric mania audience, “aren’t actual CSK fans - they come for the vibe, they want to see Dhoni bat and post stories.” After CSK’s title win in 2021, the news of Dhoni’s forever-impending retirement generated FOMO mania. The new Chepauk fans, “are like, okay till now we didn’t get to see him now let’s go to see him.” Once Dhoni leaves, she says, the vibe-and-Insta-story fans “will stop coming to the ground and the actual fans will again take over.”
This is fandom outside social media and broadcaster-generated hysteria. ARR Sriram, 33, was also one of the founders of the CSK Fan Club, like Damodharan. Today he is part of the core 25-strong group who remain active working on social, off-line and off-season activities interacting with the franchise who remain “very supportive.” A fan of Dhoni from his iconic 2005 Vizag ODI century versus Pakistan, Sriram says the season has been disappointing, “but we have to accept the fact that all other teams are also equally competitive. Dhoni is already 43 … and we are in a transitional phase, we have to accept this and move forward… this is the time to support.”
Damodharan says CSK are “being outplayed by other teams of late and if they don’t bring youngers to catch up, they will be left behind. To be consistent in a 10-team league, they need to rethink their strategy.” Manikandan was in the crowd at the LSG game and felt she saw signs of the old CSK on the field, “flying out there stopping boundaries.”
She too talks of transition from ‘Dhoni, Bravo and others’ and says, “We knew it was not going to be smooth because it won’t be easy for someone to step into Dhoni’s shoes. But as fan, we are okay with what comes our way. Even if it takes two three years… we are ready to back our captain Rutu (Gaikwad). That was our mindset.” Now that Gaikwad is out of the season, the second half of the IPL could be a longer haul.
But now that Gaikwad is out of the season, the second half of the IPL could be a longer haul.
In these conversations, Dhoni’s name is as a part of a collective whose welfare matters most. Not as the centre of the CSK universe. Sriram talks about his “invaluable” presence on the field, his batting being limited due to a knee injury to “maybe 10-15 balls” and being ‘patient’ with their new captain.
Damodharan says Dhoni is an asset behind the stumps but has also thought about the option of subbing him as a batter. “We have bowlers who can’t bat and hence it’s not needed.” He says he’s not a fan “of the spectacle of MS coming to bat to hit a few sixes to entertain the crowd. The day when he is a liability to batting lineup he can be subbed out.” No one used the words ‘Captain Cool’.
In a team sport, individual brand promotion, an overdose of broadcaster hype and DJ deafening chants are mostly cheap tricks in shiny clothes. Trying to camouflage black market ticketing, management nerves and struggling stars. CSK’s fans aren’t easily fooled.
