Chennai Super Kings lost their second consecutive match against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the 2024 Indian Premier League (IPL) season. The match called for a special performance from MS Dhoni towards the end but the wicket-taker struck out with just 3 deliveries left. Former England captain Michael Vaughan finds CSK skipper Ruturaj Gaikwad’s decision inexplicable and suggests Dhoni should be higher up in the batting order high position. Even former India all-rounder Irrfan Pathan questioned Ruturaj’s tactics and said CSK would have scored more if Dhoni had come on earlier.

In Super Kings’ last match against Delhi Capitals, Dhoni performed well with the bat and took 16 off 37 balls. However, against the Sunrisers, with three overs remaining, Dhoni came in to bat. Vaughan couldn’t understand the decision in a chat on Cricbuzz.

“Considering his performance in the last game, I’m surprised he didn’t come out to bat earlier. I don’t understand why he only batted three balls,” he said.

Even former player Irfan Pathan felt that if Dhoni had come out to bat earlier, he would have been better able to deal with SRH’s bowlers like Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jaydev Undakat.

“Right-handed batsman Dhoni should bat out of the order in this match against SRH considering the cutter’s plan to enter the pitch and play against Bhuvi and Unadkat,” he tweeted during CSK’s six-wicket defeat.

Considering the plan of cutting the pitch and playing against Bhuvi and Unadkat, right-handed batsman Dhoni should bat in order in this match against SRH.

— Irfan Pathan (@IrfanPathan) April 5, 2024

Talking about the match, CSK captain Ruturaj admitted that the team struggled to score runs in the last 5 overs and conceded too many points in the powerplay.

“I thought it was a slow pitch, to be honest, and they pitched it well on the back end and controlled the game and didn’t allow us to take advantage. I thought we did a good job early in the game, but they came back great .It’s a black soil pitch so we expected the pitch to be a bit slower but it got slower and they used the boundary size well. We lost too much on the batting PP and one catch dropped the ball though. Taking them into the 19th round is still a huge effort.

“I think a score around 170-175 would be a good total for us. There was a little bit of a show at the end but Moeen was letting the ball spin even in the 15-16th over. So I don’t think the pitch was over during the course of the game A lot has changed,” he said.