The 43-year-old MS Dhoni triggered major nostalgia with his match-winning finish in the Lucknow Super Giants vs Chennai Super Kings match in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 on Monday. Dhoni’s 11-ball 26 turned the tide in CSK’s favour after CSK seemed to have incurred another batting unit collapse. With Chennai needing 44 runs to win in the final 4 overs, the onus was on Dhoni and Shivam Dube to take the team home. The pressure was on LSG skipper Rishabh Pant to be decisive with his bowling choices. This is when Pant, a rather inexperienced skipper, erred.
Pant decided to go with the pace-bowling duo of Avesh Khan and Shardul Thakur in the final 4 overs despite the fact that leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi had been the team’s best performer in the match with the ball. In his three overs, Bishnoi had only given away 18 runs while picking two wickets. Yet, he didn’t get the chance to complete his quota of 4 overs.
Speaking at the post-match press conference, Bishnoi said that though he didn’t speak to Pant about giving him an opportunity to bowl at the death, he did go to the pitch in the middle, hoping to make the LSG skipper notice him and hand him the ball. But, that didn’t happen.
“I didn’t really talk [to Pant] about it, but I went to the wicket a couple of times and I think he had plans in place he wanted to execute,” Bishnoi told media after the game.
“In such situations the captain is better placed and he keeps wicket too, so he understands things better. According to me, he took the decision he thought was better,” he added.
Bishnoi even highlighted the need for Lucknow to play a 4th spinner on the track after the trio of Bishnoi, Digvesh Rathi and Aiden Markram had figures of 11-0-66-4. Medium pacer Shardul Thakur was the biggest disappointment for LSG, leaking 56 runs.
“It was quite a close game anyway and all our bowlers bowled well. So in my opinion, it didn’t really matter that much whether there could have been an extra spinner. In a way, we already had three spinners – Markram bowled his full quota of four overs, Rathi bowled, I bowled – so after having three spinners, a fourth spinner, I don’t think you could have played one more on that pitch.
“And as far as Mahi bhai (MS Dhoni) is concerned, as everybody knows – when the ball is in his radar and it’s his day, that’s it,” Bishnoi added.
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