Chennai Super Kings had a complete turnaround from the last IPL and dominated the league before IPL 2021 was halted amid the rise of the COVID19 cases. In the wake of it, former New Zealand cricketer Scott Styris has acknowledged that he did not expect MS Dhoni & Co to be amongst the top teams of the current tournament.

CSK did not have a great IPL 2020, where they eventually finished seventh and were the first team to be knocked out of the race for a playoff spot. It was the first time the three-time IPL champions failed to qualify for the playoffs in the history of the competition.

Resurgence of CSK surprised me – Scott Styris

However, they bounced back brilliantly this year and were placed second on the points table when the league was suspended. During a discussion on Star Sports, Scott Styris picked CSK’s revival as his standout moment of IPL 2021 and admitted it took him by surprise.

“The resurgence of CSK after last year proved that it was just a blip. I did not have a lot of confidence in them, to be perfectly honest. But they are an intelligent franchise and they made some smart decisions,” said Styris.

The Chennai Super Kings management took a couple of brave decisions that paid off to perfection. Scott Styris lauded CSK’s decision to promote Moeen Ali ahead of Suresh Raina and Ambati Rayudu in the batting order. The English all-rounder was in superlative form and scored a lot of runs in the powerplay overs which made the difference eventually.

“They dropped Raina and Rayudu down a spot, I know Raina wasn’t there last year but he has been a key at No.3 for them. As they are getting older and playing a little less cricket, they made that decision,” added Styris.

Multiple all-rounders options in the CSK team gave the top-order batsmen the freedom to bat aggressively right from the outset. This was in sharp contrast to last year when the suspect form of MS Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav in the middle order and Shane Watson at the top of the order set them back.