Former Indian cricketer Gautam Gambhir was again in the headlines for commenting on Mahendra Singh Dhoni. It all occurred after Dhoni’s CSK failed to chase a target of 217 set by Steve Smith’s Rajasthan Royals. RR was off to a flying start and Sanju Samson had already shown his intents that he was not going to hold back.
Then it was Steve Smith who carried the innings and a Jofra Archer cameo turned out to be the icing on the cake for the Rajasthan team. In response, Chennai started off well but sudden fall of wickets dropped their momentum and the team missed Ambati Rayudu very much as his replacement Ruturaj Gaikwad failed to add any impact.
Chennai made 200 runs and lost by 17 runs after what could be called not a great but an above-par effort. However, Gambhir had other views. Chennai were 77/3 in the ninth over and most of the people expected to see Dhoni coming on and leading the chase with Faf Du Plessis. Instead, Sam Curran and Kedar Jadhav were moved up the order before the skipper came on towards the end of the 13th over, where CSK needed 103 runs from 38 deliveries.
Gambhir said that according to him CSK’s batting strategy did not make any sense to him. He was highly critical about how Dhoni failed to lead his team from forward, while lauded du Plessis for his commendable performance.
While talking to ESPNCricinfo, he said, “I was a little surprised, to be honest. MS Dhoni at No.7? And send Gaikwad before him, Sam Curran before him. It doesn’t make sense to me. In fact, you should be leading from the front. And that’s not what you call leading from the front. You bat at number seven while chasing what 217? The game was over. Faf was probably the lone warrior.”
Gambhir also spoke about Dhoni’s three sixes in the last over and called it more of personal runs as it was of no use to the team.
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