MS Dhoni wants ‘much’ better wickets in Chennai Super Kings

Chennai: The opening clash of the Indian Premier League (IPL) between the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) might have seen MS Dhoni’s Chennai boys run riot with a seven-wicket win, but the skipper understands the need to be cautious with wickets like the one prepared at the MA Chidambaram Stadium here for the game.

“I never expected the wicket to play how it actually played and it was too slow and it just reminded me of the 2011 Champions League wicket. After the IPL, we came back and we had a really good season, the wicket got relaid and all of a sudden we found it very difficult,” Dhoni said after the game on Saturday.

“I feel if the wicket stays like this, it will be tough for us also. The wicket definitely needs to be a lot better than where it is right now, even with dew it was still spinning big. I feel it needs to be high-scoring, even the opposition would have known that it was a slow wicket.

“Something close to 140-150 is something you are looking at. 80, 90, 100 or 120 is really low-scoring and if you have genuine spinners in your line-up it’s very difficult to score runs. I feel the wicket needs to be much better than how it is now.”

Dhoni said that he wasn’t expecting the wicket to play the way it did.

“No not really, I wasn’t sure about the wicket. We played a practice match on the same wicket and it was not turning so much. It was slightly a high scoring match, but usually in practice matches there’s a tendency we score 30 runs more than a normal match.

“Because of that reason we thought if we win the toss we will put the opposition in and also there’s fair amount of dew,” he explained.

The skipper said that the biggest issue with a wicket like this was if Chennai ended up losing the toss because even the CSK batsmen would then at time have to bat first and there are players in the line-up who like to score freely. IANS

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