‘Beauty of Dhoni… feels like he’s adding 10 more runs on board with captaincy’: Hardik Pandya heaps praise on CSK skipper

Chennai Super Kings made it to their 10th Indian Premier League final after toppling defending champions and table-topping Gujarat Titans 15 runs at the Chepauk Stadium in the first qualifier on Tuesday.
Batting first, Ruturaj Gaikwad (60) and Devon Conway (40) set up CSK for a fighting total of 172. When the home team came out to bowl, it was Dhoni’s bowling choices and astute field settings that skittled out Gujarat for 157 runs. His field settings set up Rashid Khan’s wicket, who at one point to threatening to take away the game from the hosts at a quickfire 16-ball 30.
Dhoni’s plan for him was intricate: he got the bowler to bowl well outside off while he positioned a deep squarish point in place. Tushar Deshpande bowled one well outside that Rashid let go, but it was legal. Next ball was well outside off, full and dipping, and Rashid had to throw his bat at it. His slice-chop found the man at deep point who didn’t have to move an inch.
“That’s the beauty about Dhoni. With his mind and the way he uses the bowlers, it feels like he’s adding 10 runs. We kept losing wickets, he kept changing the bowlers, credit to him. Would be nice to meet him on Sunday,” said Gujarat skipper Hardik Pandya.
Pandya admitted that ‘basic errors had cost them the game’, but said that they would not spend too much time mulling over the defeat ahead of their do-or-die Eliminator 2 clash later this week.
When asked what the team could improve on, Pandya said: “To be honest, lot of things we did right today. We bowled some soft balls. The kind of bowlers we had, I felt we conceded 15 extra runs. We didn’t do right in both the departments. But I don’t think we need to look too much into it. We have one more game. We’ll focus on things we have done really well. We’ll give a crack again after two days. Regrets are not good in life. No worries about the defeat. We expected dew might come, it did not come.”
Talking about Dhoni’s captaincy, particularly at Chennai, AB de Villiers said on the Jio Cinema live analysis: “Opposition teams arrive at the Chepauk thinking they have to play extraordinary cricket. So there is that intimidation factor, I believe. But you look at the scoreboard, you’ll see they have lost small margins.”