Dhoni, a few weeks shy of his 42nd birthday, produced a moment of magic behind the stumps in an epic final that concluded at 1:40am local time on Tuesday morning after persistent rain interrupted proceedings at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.

With player of the tournament Shubham Gill looking dangerous on 39 off 19, Dhoni whipped off the bails in a flash while Gill was briefly out of his ground after being beaten by an excellent delivery from Ravindra Jadeja. It was a crucial contribution as CSK eventually won off the game’s final delivery.

Dhoni reportedly flew to Mumbai to undergo surgery soon after. CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan, commenting on the news, said to PTI: “Yes, Dhoni has had a successful knee surgery at the Kokilaben Hospital in Mumbai on Thursday. He is doing fine and the surgery happened in the morning. I don’t have details. I am yet to get all the details about the nature of surgery and other things.”

There was plenty of speculation regarding Dhoni’s future following the final. Following CSK’s win, the former India captain hinted that he would consider taking the “hard” option and play one more season for the franchise. He said: “If you circumstantially see, it’s the best time to announce retirement. The easy thing for me to say is thank you and retire. But the hard thing to do is to work hard for nine months and try to play one more IPL season. The body has to hold up. But the amount of love I have received from CSK fans, it would be a gift for them to play one more season.

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“The way they’ve shown their love and emotion, it’s something I need to do for them. It’s the last part of my career. It started over here and full house was chanting my name. It was same thing in Chennai, but it will be good to come back and play whatever I can. The kind of cricket I play, they feel they can play that cricket. There’s nothing orthodox about it and I like to keep it simple.”