MS Dhoni Highlighted The Biggest Reason Behind CSK’s Defeat: A chase of 174 against Royal Challengers Bangalore looked in control when Chennai Super Kings got off to another solid opening stand – this time worth 54 runs in 40 balls – by Ruturaj Gaikwad and Devon Conway.
However, after Gaikwad’s dismissal, CSK batters couldn’t get going on a pitch that wasn’t difficult to bat on and dew also made its presence felt.
Skipper MS Dhoni opined that the “shot selection could have been better” by his batsmen who, he felt, should have been a bit more restrained in their attacking strokes that led to their downfall.
“We did well to restrict them to 170-odd runs. I felt in the latter half it (the surface) could be better and we had to get off to a good start, everything was up to the mark and what let us down was the batsmanship,” MS Dhoni said at the post-match presentation.
“When you are chasing you know what is required and at times you have to curb your instinct and see what really the situation is demanding rather than playing your shots. The shot selection could have been better towards the end.”
After Gaikwad and Conway nobody other than Moeen Ali could go past the score of 20; Moeen, too, scored 34 from 27 balls at a pedestrian strike rate of 125. There was no Dhoni finish this time as the CSK skipper was dismissed for just 2 by his former teammate Hazlewood.
“We had a good start and had wickets in hand, the surface kept getting better but we lost wickets at regular intervals. We can look back at some of the shots, if we take care of those things.. chasing is about calculations and batting first is more about instinct. Ultimately as a batter or bowler you are in the middle and you have to decide, I don’t think that was a problem today,” MS Dhoni explained.
With just 4 points in 10 matches, CSK are all but eliminated from the playoff race; the maximum they can now reach is 14 and will need a miracle – win all their four games and pray for all other teams’ results to go their way – to sneak into the playoffs.
MS Dhoni, though, isn’t thinking about the points table; instead, he reiterated the need to just focus on the process.
“We need to keep looking about what went wrong, it is easy to get distracted with how many points you have, it is the mistakes and it is the process that matters rather than where you are positioned in the points table,” MS Dhoni concluded.
