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Former India cricketer Gautam Gambhir is unhappy with Chennai Super Kings (CSK) skipper MS Dhoni for coming out to bat at No. 7 position while chasing a daunting target of 217 against Rajasthan Royals (RR) on Tuesday (September 22).
Chasing a stiff total, CSK were 77/3 in the ninth over. While everyone was expecting Dhoni to anchor the run-chase from that point, Sam Curran and Kedar Jadhav were promoted to bat higher up the order.
The Ranchi-lad reasoned that he hasn’t played for a long time, so he sent the likes of Curran and Jadhav above himself.
Dhoni came to bat when his team needed 103 runs from 38 deliveries to win the match. He started very conservatively and went for the hits only in the last over when the match was sealed in RR’s favour.
‘This is not what you call leading from the front’
Gambhir remarked that CSK’s batting strategy in the match made no sense to him. He further slammed Dhoni for not leading from the front and lauded Faf du Plessis for his remarkable innings.
“I was a bit surprised, to be honest. MS Dhoni batting at No. 7? And sending Gaikwad before him, Sam Curran before him. Makes no sense to me. In fact, you should be leading from the front. And this is not what you call leading from the front. Batting at number seven when you’re chasing what 217? The game was over. Faf was probably the lone warrior,” Gambhir told ESPNCricinfo.
In the 20th over, Dhoni launched three humongous sixes in successive deliveries off Tom Curran, but, by then, the winning equation had already gone out of favour for the Super Kings.
The cricketer-turned-politician stated that those were Dhoni’s personal runs.
“Yes, you can talk about MS Dhoni’s last over when he hit three sixes, but it was of no use, to be honest. It was just all personal runs. See, if someone else would have done this, some other captain had batted number seven, he would have got a lot of flak,” concluded Gambhir.
