The focus of Friday’s IPL 2024 season opener at Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium was on Ruturaj Gaikwad’s captaincy and the performance of the reigning champion Chennai Super Kings. Only on Thursday did MS Dhoni, for the second time in his CSK career, relinquish his captaincy to elevate the young player. It was anticipated that Gaikwad would occasionally turn to the legendary captain for assistance when things got tough, but a video from Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s innings at Chepauk left many confused as to who the true on-field captain was.
On his captaincy debut, Gaikwad was fairly impressive, particularly with his bowling selections after RCB had gotten off to a fast start led by Faf du Plessis. After RCB chose to bat first, a scorching 41-run stand left Chennai in ruins. However, the hosts quickly recovered, with Mustafizur Rahman taking two wickets in the powerplay’s penultimate over and Deepak Chahar taking another in the following over to reduce the Royals to just three down for 42 runs.
At the conclusion of the ninth over of the strategic time-out, Gaikwad was observed engaging in a protracted conversation with Dhoni, presumably in search of guidance on how to proceed with the remaining half of the innings.
But the RCB came back, putting up a 174-run target thanks to a 95-run sixth-wicket stand between Anuj Rawat and Dinesh Karthik. Following the conclusion of the first innings, a social media video featuring Dhoni actively setting the pitch during the RCB’s batting innings sparked a discussion about whether Gaikwad was only an on-paper captain.
Subramaniam Badrinath, a former cricket player for India and current player for CSK, agreed, posting on social media, “I think MS Dhoni is still the fielding captain.”
Have players got used to fielding without glancing at MS Dhoni?
When asked whether the Chennai players had changed to looking at Gaikwad for fielding changes instead of Dhoni after the match, Shivam Dube, who scored a critical 28-ball 34, lacing a maximum and four boundaries to help CSK wrap up the chase with eight balls to spare, hesitantly smiled.
He stated: “Since Dhoni is the wicketkeeper, his angles in judging the field is better and so we will obviously still look at him for opinions.”
Dube chose the current captain when Suresh Raina pressed him further about who Gaikwad and Dhoni had spoken to during the team hurdle at the beginning of the game.
