There has been a lot of talk over MS Dhoni and his association with the Chennai Super Kings this season. MSD hadn’t played any competitive cricket in over a year and had announced the retirement just a month ahead of the 13th season of the Indian Premier League. Cricketing fans had all their eyes glued on MS Dhoni as there was a lot of debate surrounding his performance after a long layoff.
But it wasn’t a season to remember for both Dhoni and CSK as CSK failed to make it to the playoffs for the first time in their history while Dhoni could weave no magic with the bat. In the 14 matches he played, Dhoni could only manage 200 runs at an average of 25. The runs also came at a surprising strike rate of just 116. But Dhoni clarified during CSK’s last match of the season that retirement from IPL is far from reality and that he will continue to don the yellow jersey.
India’s World Cup-winning captain Kapil Dev talked about Dhoni’s form in the IPL and said that it will be “impossible” for Dhoni to perform well if he decides on playing in the IPL without getting any match practice. Dev wants Dhoni to play a lot more in the domestic circuit to get his form back.
“If Dhoni decides on playing only IPL every year, then it’s impossible for him to perform. It’s not a good thing to talk about age but at his age (39 years), the more he plays, the more his body will be tuned,” Kapil told ‘ABP News’.
“If you don’t play any cricket for 10 months a year and suddenly play IPL, you can see what happened. You can always have a season up or down if you have played so much cricket. It has happened to someone like Chris Gayle also,” the World Cup-winning former skipper said.
Kapil feels that it’s high time that Dhoni plays some domestic cricket this season.
“He should go back to first-class cricket (domestic List A and T20) and play there.” The straight-talking former all-rounder made it clear that it will be a challenge for Dhoni given that he has already indicated that he is “definitely not” retiring from the IPL.
“If someone has achieved so much, the dip in form does affect and it becomes a challenge”he said.
PNN/Agencies
