Chennai Super Kings skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has come under the scanner after he gave the reasoning for him coming late in the batting order, after his team’s loss to Rajasthan Royals on Tuesday, 22 September.
The cricket fans and experts asking and criticising MS Dhoni for coming late in the batting order is not new. However, people have not really bought into his tactics this year and after just two matches, his captaincy has received a lot of flak.
The newest entry to the list is former England player Kevin Petersen, who said that he’s ‘not buying’ into MS Dhoni’s justification to come into bat at No. 7 at 13.4 overs when his side was chasing a mammoth 217.
“It’s not about experiments, saying ‘oh it’s early on in the tournament’. Let me tell you, T20 cricket can bite you very, very quickly. You can end up losing five games on the go very quickly and then you can end up thinking ‘oh my goodness, are we actually going to get into the finals?’ I am not buying into this nonsense,” said Pietersen on a post-match show on Star Sports.
Pietersen’s comments came after Dhoni said that he hasn’t batted for a long time and the 14-day quarantine didn’t help.
But, Pietersen was quick to point to that if he doesn’t give himself time in the middle, how else he would get used to the conditions and batting in pressure. “When you see how close they went, du Plessis started to go, then MS Dhoni started hitting at the end and then they lost by only 16 runs.” According to him, if he had come early, he could have started going for the shots early compared to now, where he started hitting just in the last over.
The 39-year old captain also said, “We want to try a few different things, like sending Sam or Jadeja. That’s something we haven’t done for a very long time and this gives us an opportunity to do that at the start of the tournament.”
Dhoni had said that theirs has been the one team, who has kept doing the same thing every year and this time they had an opportunity to try different things. “As the tournament progresses, you will see the senior players stepping in and taking that added responsibility.”
Pietersen, however, said he believed that had Dhoni come early, the result could have been different as they started hitting only after the 14th over when they needed more than 100 runs in last 6 overs.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)