On the eve of the 2024 season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the captain of the Chennai Super Kings (CSK), MS Dhoni, handed over the captaincy of the franchise to their young opening batter, Ruturaj Gaikwad, who made a decent contribution with the bat and the leadership duties but failed to find the expected result at the end.
CSK decently began their campaign with two successive victories but lost track of the season with two back-to-back defeats. After two more consecutive wins, they faced a couple of successive defeats in the encounter. For the entire season, the Yellow Army couldn’t find the right rhythm in the competition.
The five-time champions finished in the fifth position with seven wins in 14 clashes at a net run rate of +0.392. The captain of the side finished as the second leading run-getter of the event with 583 runs in 14 innings at an average of 53 and a strike rate of over 140, shouldering on four half-centuries and one century at a best score of unbeaten 108 runs.
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Recent reports have claimed that the Super Kings could think of going after the Indian wicket-keeper batter and the current poster boy of the game for the country, Rishabh Pant, who is expected to be the new brand of the franchise after the retirement of Dhoni.
But, in that situation, they could be needed to deliver the leadership to Pant, who left the Delhi Capitals before the 2025 season as the team wasn’t confident of offering him the leadership responsibilities.
CSK CEO confirms Ruturaj Gaikwad to continue as the captain in IPL 2025
The presence of Pant will be a huge bonus for CSK as the batter can tonk the spinners or any bowlers in the middle overs, a certain period where they struggled last year in a few games. The left-handed batter clubbed 446 runs in 13 innings of the previous season at an average of over 40 and a strike rate of more than 155, shouldering on three half-centuries at a best score of unbeaten 88 runs.
But does that mean the CSK franchise will betray their previous year’s captain Gaikwad for the upcoming 18th edition of the tournament? The latter has shown his incredible quality of handling the pressure in a calm atmosphere.
The CEO of the five-time champions, Kasi Viswanathan, met their former batter Ambati Rayudu in an interaction where he confirmed that they would be sticking with the Maharashtra-born for the captaincy in the future, who is expected to gift them their sixth title of the league.
“Yeah, we will try to do our best (to win our sixth title). As you know, we always try to follow a process. Ruturaj is, as you know, someone who comes with the same mold as MS. He is also very calm and collected, and I think we should have a very good future.” CSK CEO expressed this during the discussion.
The right-handed opening batter is the fourth-highest run-scorer of the tournament with 2380 runs in 65 innings at an average of 41.75 and a strike rate of 136.86, shouldering on 18 half-centuries and a couple of centuries.
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For the entire last season, the fans kept on waiting for their ‘Thala Dhoni’ to come up the order, but the World Cup-winning leader of India made his presence in the middle in the lower order. The CEO highlighted that the veteran’s mindset has already gone towards the numbers eight, nine, and ten.
CSK has already retained Gaikwad, Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Matheesha Pathirana, and Shivam Dube for the new season before balancing the squad on November 24 and 25 in the mega auction.