IPL 2019 | MS Dhoni's absence created a huge void, feels Stephen Fleming

Indian Premier League 2019 table-toppers Chennai Super Kings succumbed to a rare defeat in their 12th match of this season against Mumbai Indians. MI defended CSK without making them reach the target score of 155 runs. With this 46-runs loss against MI, CSK have registered their fourth loss in the season. It is notable that CSK skipper MS Dhoni was ruled out from the match due to fever and Suresh Raina led the team.

After this crushing defeat, CSK’s coach Stephen Fleming has come out with an opinion that absence of ‘comforting’ presence of MS Dhoni has accounted for the loss and missing a great leader like Dhoni created a huge void for the team.

“Yeah sure, think you know the answer to that. Dhoni is a great leader and a great player. He’s been a constant for us for so many years. You just get into the rhythm while having him there. When you take a leader like that out, there are going to be some holes to fill. It’s not that we’re not trying to fill it. It’s just that the hole is quite big. It takes a mammoth effort to lift the team when you have one of your best players unavailable”, Fleming was quoted as saying by PTI.

CSK has shown the same results against Sunrisers Hyderabad suffering a six-wicket loss, playing without Dhoni for the first time in IPL 2019. The performance of the team was below par in the two matches where Dhoni could not play. 

“The two games we played when we lost Dhoni the performances have been well below par. There is comfort when he is there, but he didn’t bat in the last game. I think the players are good enough and have experience and that’s the key when we have situations which don’t go our way,” the CSK coach explained.

“If we do have situations that don’t go our way, we should have the experience of dealing with it; which we haven’t at the moment. I think what concerns me is repetitive mistakes we made many times this season. The fact that we are still at the top of the table is a testament to bowlers and individual performances.”

CSK also failed to pick up wickets at regular intervals which Fleming feels cost them the whole match. They also needed to stitch in good partnerships in which the team from Tamil Nadu failed against the Indians.

“If we would have kept taking wickets, it might be 135-140, we felt it was tough to drag it to 155, but we needed good partnerships at the top to minimise the effect of their spinners but we didn’t get that and it wasn’t our day really, a lot of things didn’t go our way, we didn’t create enough to make them go our way”, the 46-year-old coach said.

“If we do have situations that don’t go our way, we should have the experience of dealing with it; which we haven’t at the moment. I think what concerns me is repetitive mistakes we made many times this season. The fact that we are still at the top of the table is a testament to bowlers and individual performances. We don’t want to wait until it’s too late, we have two games left, and hopefully, the finals. We should be able to pull off a team performance.”