It is no surprise anymore that Chennai Super Kings are one of the best followed teams in the Indian Premier League, perhaps even the most when it comes to away matches. On Tuesday, they were playing a ‘home’ game in the national capital at the Arun Jaitley Stadium as per the revised schedule for IPL 2025’s final set of league matches. And once again the stands were filled with yellow jerseys.
So much so that the Rajasthan Royals official social media handle posted a self deprecating message before the toss at Kotla. Sharing the video of the toss interview conducted by Ravi Shastri, the post on X read: “To that one Pink shirt in the background, let’s win this for you tonight…”
Of course, there was a huge roar that accompanied MS Dhoni’s introduction and chat with former India coach Shastri. CSK’s account posted: “Toss ->Thala ->Whistles! Delhi making us feel at home!”
Sanju Samson won the toss and opted to bowl, and conceded that the team has not been chasing well this season but the last match of their campaign was a chance to change that. “There is no place to hide,” he’d say. Both teams are out of playoffs contention this season, so the capital clash between these two former champions is as dead a rubber as it could be, playing only for deciding who is likely to finish last this season.
Captain Dhoni, as he has been saying for a while, said CSK want to look ahead to the future and see which players can make their case for a place in the playing XI for next year. “We want to express ourselves in our batting department which has done better in the last few games,” Dhoni said at the toss. “We need to figure out which individual will do well in which slot next year. Need to work on our bowling too. Once we were out of the tournament, we wanted to find the answers for the next year. Need to look in to the combination and a couple of players we can pick in auction. We are on a roll in the batting department and we want to continue doing that, we struggled there at the start of the season. Other teams have shown that you can play good cricketing shots and still score at a good strike rate.”
CSK, it is worth noting, have never finished as the bottom-placed side in the history of Indian Premier League. It is a an unwanted first that they are hoping to avoid this year.