28 March,2022 08:54 AM IST | Mumbai | Harit Joshi
MS Dhoni and Stephen Fleming
Mahendra Singh Dhoni turned back the clock to show glimpses of his vintage self towards the end of his unbeaten 50 for Chennai Super Kings against Kolkata Knight Riders on Saturday. But coach Stephen Fleming wanted his top-order to fire.
Defending champions CSK went down by six wickets in the Indian Premier League opening game at the Wankhede Stadium where Dhoni and skipper Ravindra Jadeja (26 not out off 28 balls) managed to put up 131-5 despite being 84-5 in 17 overs.
"It [Dhoni's innings] was good, but it would have been nice had the top order fired. The depth we have in our batting is a positive and certainly, MS getting runs early in the tournament is a positive," said Fleming.
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KKR were fluent in their chase, thanks to new recruit Ajinkya Rahane's breezy 34-ball 44 as the two-time champions avenged their loss in last year's IPL final.
Dhoni struggled to get going, scoring just seven runs off his first 18 balls. The veteran star then swiftly changed gears in the last three overs as KKR leaked 47 runs.
Although Jadeja took over the mantle from Dhoni, the bulk of the work with regards to planning and field-setting was done by Dhoni. Even before the warm-up session, Fleming and Dhoni were the ones involved in discussions with Jadeja doing his knocking in the nets. Fleming, who has been CSK's head coach since 2009, revealed that change-of-guard talks were initiated during the last IPL. "[It's] something MS and I talked about even last season. The timing was MS's call. He wanted to give Jadeja a clean slate going into the series. It was communicated to Mr N Srinivasan and then to the team.
"It is going to be a bit of a transition period as we develop a relationship with Jadeja and also have MS there. You just don't discard a player just because he doesn't have the captaincy tag. This is a bit of a change, but we will work through that," said Fleming, who felt assessing the conditions at Wankhede was quite tough with heavy dew creating havoc in the second half of the match.
