Chennai Super Kings (CSK), captained by MS Dhoni, lost their first match of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2019 on Wednesday. The Yellow Army slumped to a defeat by 37 runs against Rohit Sharman’s Mumbai Indians (MI) at the iconic Wankhede Stadium to hand the hosts their 100th victory in the tournament.
The 37-year-old Dhoni commands the highest level of respect inside the CSK dressing room and Shardul Thakur must have an idea of his captain’s wrath of a bad fielding day. When the pacer made a couple of fielding errors on a single delivery in the 8th over of the match, he instantly folded hands to say “Sorry, MSD”.
— CricBoll (@mycricboll) April 4, 2019
Meanwhile, Dhoni blamed his team’s death bowling and slip-ups in the field for the loss against Mumbai Indians. The Chennai side leaked 45 runs in the last two overs that took Mumbai’s score to 170, a target that eventually proved too high for them to overhaul.
“I think quite a few things went wrong for us,” Dhoni said at the post-match presentation. “I think we started off well and in the 12th-13th over also we were on the mark, but after that, there were some drops and misfields. The death bowling also didn’t come off. We don’t have bowlers who hit the deck hard, it was slightly tough on them. We do have one-on-one plans, but we needed to know where we could cut-off the boundaries, which batsmen to target.”
