"Making Jadeja the captain was a Wrong Decision" - Virender Sehwag lashes out at CSK for change in leadership
On Wednesday, the defending champions, Chennai Super Kings, faced their seventh loss of the season when RCB defeated them by 13 runs in a must-win game. And with this defeat, the season for Chennai Super Kings is almost over as they are not out of contention for the top four. That means we will see a new champion crowned this season.
The poor performance of the four-time champions has brought many doubts to many ex-cricketers and fans about what went wrong that CSK suffered such a horrible season. There might be many reasons behind this: a sudden change in captaincy, poor batting line-up performance, Ruturaj struggled in the first phase of the competition, and Jadeja himself failed to deliver as expected.
Former Indian opener Virender Sehwa looked unimpressed with Chennai and showed his dissatisfaction. During an interaction with Cricbuzz, Sehwag highlighted a few areas that might have affected CSK games this season. He said that the first mistake was the change in captaincy, which happened just two days prior to the first match.
The 43-year-old said that it was a wrong decision. He also pointed out that if Jadeja was given the responsibility of a leader, he should have been given a complete run for the entire season. Sehwag also opened up about the batting failure. He said that CSK didn't have a settled XI and their star opener, Gaikwad, didn't do much in the first games.
Speaking further on CSK's performance, he said that it was the batting that let them down that led them to being kicked out of the competition, as in one match it was Dhoni who scored, and in the other match it was Gaikwad who scored, but there was no consistency. Even in the match which MSD won, that was almost lost. Sehwag concluded, "If Dhoni had been the captain from the beginning, then it would've been better and maybe CSK wouldn't have lost match so many matches."
CSK lost to RCB in the 49th match of the TATA IPL 2022. Chasing the target of 174 runs, Dhoni and his men fell 13 runs short of the target. The RCB bowlers, especially Harshal Patel (3/35) and Glenn Maxwell (2/22), did the damage and helped their team win and get two vital points on the table. For CSK only, Devon Conway (56 off 37) and Moeen Ali (34 off 27) played good innings.
Mahipal Lomror was the star with the bat for Bangalore, as he scored a vital 42 runs to lay the platform for a good finish. Both openers, Du Plessis (38 off 22) and Virat Kohli (30 off 33), also made a contribution. The veteran wicket-keeper batter, Dinesh Karthik (26 off 17), finished the innings with two sixes in the last over.