CHENNAI: Captaincy is something that every cricketer wishes to get one day, but only few actually enjoy it. The pressures and pulls of being a captain is immense. It is all the more high when you captain an iconic side like the Chennai Super Kings. But Ruturaj Gaikwad seems to be comfortable with the job.
MS Dhoni and CSK are synonymous, so comparisons are bound to be there. Dhoni's style of captaincy has always been calm and composed. He never allows emotion to affect him or the team be it a loss or a great win. Plus Dhoni is known to back players and has the unique ability to extract the best out of his players. So many wonder what Gaikwad's approach would be towards the hot seat. Gaikwad seems to have done his homework well and has a fair understanding of his job.
“Captaincy-wise, I feel I don't want to be a specific kind of character. Just like to flow things as they are flowing. Keep the culture of CSK basically going. I feel the success we had, the things we had been doing...I don’t want to change a single bit of it. I want to come there, take my own decisions and give as much freedom as possible, because that is what has been happening since I started playing for CSK. So nothing really changes and I’m enjoying a lot,” he said after CSK got back to their winning ways by defeating Kolkata Knight Riders on Monday night.
Ruturaj insists that he is also human and does get hurt when his team loses but at the same time he has confidence in his team to bounce back. "Definitely, I mean if you don't get hurt after a loss then you are not playing cricket passionately. Definitely everyone gets hurt. But I would say in a tournament like IPL you are bound to lose 4 to 5 games. So obviously you have to approach every game with the same intensity. Sometimes opposition plays really good cricket, sometimes toss matters, sometimes, you know, we don't capitalise on certain things," said Gaikwad.
In the last few games, there have been quite a few changes in the playing XI, which is very unlike CSK. Gaikwad has an explanation: "About the team changes, all the changes we have made so far are forced changes. If you would see, we didn't have Matheesha Pathirana in the first game, then you know, we had Pathirana and Mustafizur Fizz in the second game. We didn't have both of them, probably in the fourth game. So we had to change the combination. So probably we needed two off spinners in the last game (against Hyderabad). So we had to, you know, rest Sameer Rizvi in this game (KKR) again, Deepak Chahar was having a slight niggle. So every game we are having forced changes."
"And I think with the impact player rule, you know, having that extra batter really matters. So I think at this stage of the tournament some changes (team combo) are happening which are not under our control. We as a team captain or coach or whoever it is, we go and explain the situation to them (players). So it's not that something bad has happened or it's not that we have dropped, but it's just that sometimes there are forced changes," he added.
Ruturaj during the course of his win against KKR gave one and all a glimpse of his captaincy abilities. He brought in Jadeja at the right time and the all-rounder with guile put the visitors on the back foot. "I would say no particular process, just that I thought in the first six overs, they (KKR) got off to a really good start and looking at the wicket, I think no one really felt that it would be sticky. But after Jadeja's first over, we got to know that it was slightly sticky. So I just felt that, you know, spinners coming from both ends, it'll be tougher for batters, especially their batters who you know, always like to take the game off (away). If we get two, three wickets within that three, four hour span, we have a chance to come back in the game. And I think that's what happened," he said.