CHENNAI: India’s ace all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja had a disastrous start to his Chennai Super Kings (CSK) captaincy stint as the defending champions went down by six wickets to Kolkata Knight Riders in the inaugural match of the IPL on Saturday night.
With a new-look line-up in pace, the team was outplayed on all fronts by a young and buoyant Kolkata side. Chennai, despite having a two-week practice session in Surat before the start of the tournament, looked rusty with skipper Jadeja himself looking nervous. The southpaw, apart from playing an uncharacteristic inning of 26 from 28 deliveries, was involved in a mix-up with Ambati Rayudu which resulted in the latter’s run-out.
Chennai’s head coach Stephen Fleming admitted that his team on the whole was nervous and just couldn’t assess the conditions well at the Wankhede Stadium. “What we found today (Saturday) is we started the tournament a little bit nervous. We didn’t assess conditions that well. We were just behind the eight-ball really. That happened last year as well, and it was a good catalyst for us to move forward. Conditions were quite tough. It was very wet, the second half. Assessing conditions during the first part of the tournament is going to be a key aspect. Winning the toss as well, to make sure we get our decision-making right. So it was a tough day for us,” observed Fleming.
MS Dhoni came in when CSK was reeling at 61 for 5. He started cautiously keeping in mind the situation and was careful against Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy. Once the pressure eased a bit he upped the ante in the last three overs.
“It (Dhoni scoring runs) was good but it would have been nice if the top order had fired. The depth we have got in our batting is a positive. And certainly, MS getting runs early in the tournament is a positive. But it was a pretty rusty tournament all up. It was positive but there is a lot of improvement there,” opined the former Kiwi captain.
Coming to Dhoni’s sudden relinquishing of captaincy, Fleming said that there were talks from last year about it. He insisted that the timing of the decision was Dhonis. “We talked about it (captaincy). It’s been something MS and I talked about during the last season. The timing was MS’s call. I think it’s been documented that he wanted to give Jadeja the clean slate going into the series so it was communicated with N Srinivasan and conveyed to the team. We 100 per cent respect that,” said Fleming.
“There’s going to be a bit of a transition period as we develop the relationship with Jadeja and also have MS there so you don’t just discard a player just because he doesn’t have the captaincy tag. You develop the new captain and work with the experience we’ve got, and thankfully we’ve got quite a bit of that. It’s a little bit of change, but we’ll work through that nicely,” added Fleming on the way ahead for Chennai.