Chennai Super Kings fans got to see a lot of MS Dhoni on Saturday, with the iconic wicket-keeper batter playing 26 deliveries in the middle during the Indian Premier League match against Delhi Capitals at Chepauk. Usually, if Dhoni plays as many deliveries, he ends up finishing the game for his side but the story was quite different this time. In 26 balls, Dhoni only scored 30 runs, while struggling to hit the ball the way he wanted to. AS CSK fell short by 26 runs while chasing a target of 184 against DC, Dhoni became the target of trolls on social media.
Harsha Bhogle, famous commentator and a pundit of the game, shared some intriguing insights into Dhoni’s struggles against Delhi, highlighting how his body isn’t able to execute what his mind intends to.
“When you are not playing anything from IPL to IPL, your mind knows what to do, but you just haven’t done it enough. He is very fit from a keeping point of view, from a general point of view. He is still the best keeper in this league. But, as a batter, he is not able to play the shots he wants to,” Bhogle said in a chat on Cricbuzz.
While the entire cricket world knows Dhoni needs to deliver better if he is in the middle for roughly 10 overs, Harsha did give a little benefit of the doubt for the former CSK and India skipper, saying this wasn’t the sort of Chepauk pitch where batters can come and deliver with ease.
“Only one thing I would say in his favour is that this wasn’t the easiest track to come out and hit through the line. The ball was stopping and coming, which just shows how well the opposition batted. This wasn’t one of those tracks where you can go and hit the ball. But he was pushing for singles, trying to knock a boundary somewhere, that wasn’t happening. It wasn’t an easy surface to bat on. It’s almost got to a stage now where the track that he nurtured, the tracks where, as a captain, he was untouchable, is now coming back to make it difficult for him as a batter,” he asserted.
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