Former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar has raised questions about Chennai Super Kings’ campaign in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 season. He suspects that “something is happening” in the dressing room behind the scenes.
All-rounder Ravindra Jadeja replaced MS Dhoni as the skipper of the franchise, before the start of the season. However, after their disastrous start, he handed back the duties to the wicket-keeper. Two matches later, Jadeja suffered an injury and was ruled out for the remainder of the season.
In another incident, Chennai Super Kings batter Ambati Rayudu took to Twitter to announce that this will be his last IPL. However, moments later, he deleted the tweet. The CEO of the franchise stated that Rayudu won’t be retiring and will be part of the franchise.
The recent events concerning the Chennai Super Kings have raised some suspicions. Talking to the Espncricinfo, Sanjay Manjrekar expressed that “something is happening” in the team. He stated,
“When a team doesn’t qualify for the playoffs twice in three seasons, something is happening. There has been no official statement from the outside. Jadeja has become unavailable for the entire season. On the ground, it didn’t seem like a big injury. So you can say that something or the other is happening.”
ESPNcricinfo has learned that Ambati Rayudu took down his tweet after being spoken to by the CSK management #IPL2022
— ESPNcricinfo (@ESPNcricinfo) May 14, 2022
The former cricketer further explained the reasons that the team could not do well on the field. He highlighted Ruturaj Gaikwad’s inconsistent run and Deepak Chahar’s injury as the major reason. Sanjay said,
“First half is where the team solidifies its position in the points table. They took a few blows there – Ruturaj Gaikwad wasn’t very consistent, they missed Deepak Chahar a lot, kept on searching a seam bowler and then they lost Dhoni’s leadership too. I don’t blame Jadeja for that because he was given that leadership. It might have been different had Dhoni led continuously. One more thing that was CSK’s specialty was they didn’t used to change their team. That has happened only once this year when they had won 1-2 matches. So that winning formula where they used to keep the same team hasn’t happened this year.”
He has great temperament – Sanjay Manjrekar on Mukesh Choudhary
Sanjay Manjrekar praised the Chennai Super Kings bowler, Mukesh Choudhary, who has been one of the finds of the tournament. The pacer has been a consistent performer this year, with 16 wickets in 11 matches, at an average of 22.18.
The former India cricketer lauded Mukesh Choudhary’s performance and believes that he is not “a flash in the pan”. Sanjay Manjrekar said,
“It doesn’t look like a flash in the pan where he’ll perform in just one-two matches because he not only swings the ball, he has the pace, the height, so picks wickets from short of length, can use the bouncer, has good temperament too. After that night where he got hit for a lot of runs and he dropped three catches too, making a comeback like this shows that he has great temperament.”
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