MS Dhoni has been announced as CSK's skipper for the remainder of IPL 2025 after an injury ruled Ruturaj Gaikwad out of the campaign. It is not ideal, but the franchsie had little choice.
"We have an uncapped player, MS Dhoni, who will take over as captain, for the remainder of the IPL."
Even if you weren't in the press conference room, you could just see it. CSK, with a record of 1-4 so far in the competition, would make a miraculous comeback and storm into the playoffs before lifting a sixth title thanks to the leadership of their icon player – and every Instagram edit with a pounding soundtrack and fade in-fade out animation effects would start with this quote from Stephen Fleming.
While this fantasy is what every CSK fan will be dreaming of, it is equally justifiable to say there are some (still a minority for now), that will not welcome this development. In fact, for them, "I've had enough" might well be the overriding thought.
Take out the name, and tell someone that the captain an IPL franchise has ended up with is a 43-year-old who allows his knee to dictate whether he can bat for 10 overs or not, and they would question the sanity of everyone involved.
For the neutral, this is the scenario.
Read more: Denting the legacy: MS Dhoni is making CSK's batting worse
Is Dhoni's return as skipper a failure of planning?
IPL teams do not always appoint vice-captains. This season, Delhi Capitals have named Faf du Plessis, Gujarat Titans Rashid Khan and Kolkata Knight Riders Venkatesh Iyer. Du Plessis was an IPL captain last year and is likely to just provide support to a first-timer, and Iyer was bought for a massive sum at the auction, before KKR decided to name a player who almost went unsold as their skipper.
The point is that squads are rarely put together with the expectation that the captain will be out for a significant period of time. Even if they are, most teams usually have a relatively experienced or talented player who can step up.
Dhoni's taking over from Gaikwad now is not a unique failure of planning on CSK's part, on the captaincy front.
In the frankest sense, captaincy is minimally significant in a tournament like the IPL. Batting and bowling are of course paramount, and the second biggest influencer comes at the auction table, where squads are constructed. A moment of brilliance, tactics-wise, can perhaps change a game or two, if and when the margins are relatively tight. Captains can be important for team morale and bonding off the field, but that can hapen from outside the playing XI.
CSK had little choice but to go back to Dhoni
It did appear that CSK had finally moved on from MS Dhoni the IPL captain last year, when Ruturaj Gaikwad took over. But following Gaikwad's injury that has now ruled him out of the rest of this campaign, CSK did not have an abundance of options at their disposal.
They tried the Ravindra Jadeja experiment in 2022, only for Dhoni to re-take the reins when that season went off the rails. R Ashwin was a potential candidate, but if Dhoni's age is a problem, potentially so is Ashwin's, at 38 years old. Besides, he has only just rejoined the franchise after a decade away.
Had Dhoni not been an automatic choice in CSK's playing XI (or XII), there would have been more interesting options to explore. But for better or for worse, he is. That made the decision rather straightforward. Captaincy credentials-wise, he is still a five-time IPL winning, Champions League-winning, T20 World Cup-winning, World Cup-winning, and Champions Trophy-winning captain. His wicketkeeping remains golden, and there is little to suggest he has lost any tactical acumen. The biggest difference is that he now takes over a floundering franchise, and he is no longer the overall cricketer he once was.
In an ideal world, it wouldn't have been this way, but having made their bed by assuring him a place in the side, they must make the most of it.
After all, it is only nine games (read with a healthy dose of trepidation). With more serious problems around the team, could it really get much worse for CSK at this point?
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