Robin Uthappa on Dhoni batting at No 9

There has been plenty of debate over Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s position on the Chennai Super Kings batting order after he came in to bat at No 9 against Royal Challangers Bengaluru. He batted at No 7 against the Rajasthan Royals when he scored just 16 runs off 11 balls. CSK fell short 50 runs against RCB and six runs versus RR. Former India cricketer Robin Uthappa also said he was struggling to understand the reasoning behind Dhoni batting at No 9.
Asked how he felt about Dhoni batting at No 9, Uthappa said: Frustrated. F*****g frustrated. What the f**k is going on, dude! He might as well have (batted even lower than No 9). It wouldn’t have made a difference. I would say ‘befuddlement’ is too weak a term. What the heck! Like what is the thinking? Because you know you’re not going to win the game the time he’s coming to bat. the time (Ravichandran) Ashwin’s coming to bat, you know that you have less than a slim chance of winning the game. The only thing that you can give yourself the best chance to do is reduce that net run rate. The margins in the IPL are so slim at the back end that you really want to keep your net run rate as much in the positive as possible, right?”
“What confuses me is that someone like MS Dhoni knows this stuff right so there must be some form of thought behind this. Because what is the reason for him to bat at number 9? It’s been two days and I’m trying to wrap my head around it. I still haven’t been able to wrap my head around it. Because I know MS. Mahi’s a friend and and I know how he thinks. For me, I don’t know if this is a team decision or I don’t know if this is an individual decision, because he also kind of has a say there in the side. So we don’t know where it comes from. If it’s from Dhoni I’m very fascinated. I want to know what the thinking is. I’d love to know what the thinking is,” Uthappa said on the The KimAppa show with cricket analyst Jarrod Kimber.
“What confuses me because because the asking rate was so high in the 13th and 14th over (in the game vs RCB), I was like there’s no way MS is going to come below number eight cause at number eight you still felt like I want the other guys to take the the chunk of the workload so if push comes to shove I’m going to be there. Here push came to shove and then went some more as well and still he had turned up and then you’re wondering what’s the thinking behind this because it doesn’t augur well for CSK.”