During the match against Rajasthan Royals, Chennai Super Kings captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni lifted a few eyebrows with his tactics. In a 217-run chase, he arrived to bat at number seven and left many fans and experts baffled about his batting role in the game.
Though MS Dhoni justified being away from action for a long time, he was criticized by former Indian cricketer Gautam Gambhir for “not leading from the front.” Kevin Pietersen, the former England cricketer, has now entered the list of critics of Dhoni for his tactics in the game.
It’s not a matter of experiments, saying ‘oh, it’s early in the tournament.’ Let me tell you, T20 cricket is very, very easy to bite you. You can end up losing five games very rapidly on the go and then you can end up thinking, ‘oh my goodness, are we going to get into the finals, actually? ’. I’m not buying into this nonsense,’ said Pietersen on the Star Sports post-match broadcast.
“There are a few different things we want to do, like sending Sam or Jadeja. That’s something we haven’t done for a very long time, and that gives us the chance to do it at the start of the tournament,’ said Dhoni.
“You can see the senior players stepping in and taking on that extra responsibility as the tournament progresses”
Well, otherwise, we were one team that kept doing the same thing. I feel that we’ve got a chance to try a few different things. We can go back to what our ability is, if it doesn’t work,’ he added.
However, Pietersen thought the outcome of the match might well have been different if Dhoni had batted higher up the order.
You have to give yourself the possibility, at least, to win the game. Du Plessis started to go when you see how close they went, then MS Dhoni started to hit at the final over, and then CSK lost by just 16 runs.
So we were talking about a time of 4 or 5-over where they just knocked it around, knocked it around and ran stupid singles. They should have captured the game with a little bit of focus up there. They could have knocked this score away easily. You can win this game if you need 20 in the last over,’ Pietersen said.