On Wednesday, there were no fans at CSK’s training session. No noise, no chants, no whistles. Just the ground and the work.
Dhoni batted against the spinners, muscling it from the crease. Between deliveries, he set up imaginary field placings — pointing, adjusting, moving fielders that weren’t there, preparing for a crowd that wasn’t watching. Then against the pacers, working different lengths. The wide ball outside off, sliced over covers. The hard length dealt with on its own terms. Not just going straight. Finding angles.
A 44-year-old man at an empty ground, setting fields in his head for a game that hasn’t started yet.
AB de Villiers, speaking on JioHotstar recently, had a question about all of this. “We know he can be impactful with the bat, but if he’s batting that low and not captaining, it feels like he’s almost just making up a spot for the wrong reasons. There’s still a place for him, but he needs to bat higher, at least at six, maybe even at five or four at times.”
He was saying what the yellow faithful at Chepauk have been quietly thinking for a season now but couldn’t bring themselves to say out loud.
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For years, the only question at Chepauk was when Dhoni would arrive. Fans booed their own team if it meant accelerating his entry. Celebrated opposition wickets. Waited. The moment he appeared at the top of the dressing room steps, the ground changed register entirely — noise, colour, belief, the whole thing.
Ambati Rayudu, who played alongside Dhoni at CSK for years, described what that noise does to the players on the other side of it. “It can get quite intimidating for new players. It’s quite loud. The support is phenomenal. But as you go on and play, then you realise they are MS Dhoni fans before they are CSK fans,” Rayudu said last year. “Even though we also love MS Dhoni, and they also love MS Dhoni and we want to see him bat, but sometimes when you are going out to bat they are shouting from the crowd to… literally asking you to get out. Or they are anticipating or expecting you to get out.”
Rayudu had a suggestion. ”The best person who can address that is MS Dhoni himself. If he comes out and says, ‘they are all our players, and just like me batting they are batting in the middle’, or something like that to soothe the crowd, it will be great for the players.”
Last season, something shifted. The murmurs started. From when will he arrive to why should he still — it took one underwhelming season for even the most loyal to start asking the question the franchise had long resisted. Not when. Whether.
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With the new season just over a week away, Dhoni’s role is genuinely uncertain for the first time. The familiar question — will Dhoni play — has splintered into several harder ones. Will he play as an Impact Player? Who keeps wicket — Sanju Samson or Urvil Patel? Where does he bat? How many deliveries can he actually face?
The numbers from last season make the answers harder, not easier.
In 13 innings in IPL 2025, Dhoni walked out to bat inside the 15th over on eight occasions. His strike rate across the season was 135.17. But the context of those innings tells a harder story. CSK were in trouble when he arrived, often deep in a chase with too many wickets down and too many runs needed. The innings that brought the ear-splitting noise also, on several occasions, ended in defeat. The fortress went quiet. Not even the in-house DJ could wake them up.
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Batting him higher up the order is not the answer either. With Samson, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ayush Mhatre, Dewald Brevis and Shivam Dube in the XI, CSK are no longer the team that needed Dhoni at five to rescue a middle-order collapse. The batting has depth now. If Dhoni bats high, he takes a spot that could belong to someone twenty years younger and considerably more mobile.
As an Impact Player batting low, the calculation changes — fewer deliveries, less running, maximum impact. But the opposition have adjusted. Last season, spinners were used specifically against him, the variations that his reflexes at 44 no longer read as cleanly as they once did. The match-up has been found.
Against the spinners at training, he was working from the crease. Setting up fields in his head. Against the pacers, finding the angles — the slice over covers, the hard length met on its own terms. He knows what is being done to him. He is preparing a response. Whether the body at 44 can execute what the mind is preparing for is the question only the season will answer.
De Villiers’ point cuts through all of it. A player of Dhoni’s stature should not be in a team to make up a spot. The question has changed. For the first time in years, Chepauk is not simply waiting for Dhoni to arrive. It is wondering what his arrival will mean. That uncertainty — in the stands, in the franchise, in the numbers — is new. And it is the most significant thing about CSK’s 2026 season before a ball has been bowled.