IPL 2025: MS Dhoni love story, to be continued at CSK

Former Chennai Super Kings captain MS Dhoni. (ANI)

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In a pre-season promotional ad, Sanju Samson is seen telling MS Dhoni that a new 13-year-old boy in the Rajasthan Royals squad will win an IPL title before the Chennai Super Kings legend retires! The tongue-in-cheek comment will resonate with fans.“Will this be Dhoni’s last IPL?” That’s a question around which a cottage industry has sprung up over the last few IPL seasons. There’s no definitive answer to that question yet. No one exactly knows when it’s going to happen. And by now, Dhoni himself has started enjoying this cat-and-mouse game. He loves to come up with cryptic comments about his “last few years in cricket” here and there, sending everyone in a tizzy.After his international retirement way back in Aug 2020, the 43-year-old’s batting prowess has been understandably on the wane. His body, quite clearly, struggles to take the wear and tear of the two-month grind that is the IPL. In the last two years, he mostly restricted himself to 10-ball cameos, in which he looked to clear the fence.While he has struggled to manoeuvre the strike against spinners in the middle overs, his knees are not good enough to go for those super-quick singles that he was a master of in his prime.But then, that’s just part of the narrative. The IPL is not just about batting, bowling or fielding skills. Dhoni, though, remains a magnificent wicketkeeper. His experience and subtle fielding changes play a massive role. There’s absolutely no doubt nobody understands the on-field dynamics in an IPL game better than Dhoni.The topic of Dhoni’s restricted game-time often comes up in conversations with Chennai Super Kings officials. Their standard reply is, “You can never buy experience in the market. It’s up to Dhoni to decide when he wants to go.”There’s one thing, however, that needs to be made clear — Dhoni doesn’t allow himself to be a liability on the field. If we look at his IPL 2024 stats, we will see that he has scored only 167 runs in 14 games, but his average is 53.66 and strike-rate a ridiculous 220.54.In fact, the fear factor that Dhoni still generates at the back-end of an innings is unmatched. If we go back to CSK ’s last game against RCB in 2024, Dhoni almost pulled off a miracle chasing a huge score, until the ball had to be changed when a six that he hit off left-arm pacer Yash Dayal in the 20th over vanished outside the ground. The new ball was dry and hard, Dayal got some extra bounce and induced an edge off Dhoni’s bat that finished CSK’s hopes of qualifying for the playoffs.Had CSK made the last-four stage, there was a possibility that it could have been Dhoni’s final IPL outing. The qualifier and the final were in Chennai and Dhoni would have got a chance to keep a promise that he had made to his fans a few years ago: “I will play my last IPL match at the MA Chidambaram Stadium.” Dhoni doesn’t always make promises, but if he does, he tries to keep them.The IPL management, too, has played its part to ensure Dhoni gets a shot at fulfilling his promise. They tweaked a retention rule, allowing a player who retired from international cricket five years ago to be retained for Rs 4 crore ahead of the big auction. The beneficiary, obviously, was CSK and Dhoni.The legend, though, is trying his best to be in the best shape for this IPL. He was one of the first to arrive in Chennai about a month ago and has been training hard. The news that filters out of the camp suggests that his body is in better shape than where it was last year. The batting, too, isn’t going badly.New CSK captain Ruturaj Gaikwad , too, has settled in well and there seems to be a core in place for the next few years. Still, Dhoni remains the ‘super boss’ of the team. Come the 19th over of a tight game, it will still be MSD making those field changes and Gaikwad will probably man the long-off boundary.Not that the CSK diehards will mind one bit. It’s a love story that they don’t want to end, come what may.

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