CSK under pressure — Dhoni out

Chennai Super Kings did not arrive in Bengaluru with a small problem. They arrived with the shape of a season starting to go wrong. Their first game had ended in a limp 127 against Rajasthan Royals, chased down with nearly eight overs left. Their second brought 209 against Punjab Kings, which still was not enough. Across those two defeats, CSK’s bowlers managed only seven wickets. Then came Royal Challengers Bengaluru, the defending champions, fresh from chasing 202 against Sunrisers Hyderabad inside 16 overs. At the Chinnaswamy, where scoring has become almost routine violence, that was a dangerous mismatch. (espncricinfo.com) The Dhoni news made it sharper. MS Dhoni was ruled out with a calf strain and is expected to miss the first two weeks of IPL 2026. That meant CSK were not just missing a finisher or a wicketkeeper. They were missing the player who has defined the franchise’s emotional center for nearly two decades. His absence from the opener against Rajasthan had already marked a first in team history: CSK had never before played an IPL match without both Dhoni and Suresh Raina in the XI. This was no one-off rest day. It was the opening phase of the season, and CSK had to function without the person the team has built itself around. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) That matters because CSK do not yet look like a team that knows what it is without him. The batting order has been reworked. Younger players have been pushed forward. The results have been messy. Stephen Fleming has tried to frame the transition as manageable, but the evidence on the field says otherwise. CSK have scored too slowly when caution was fatal and conceded too freely when control was essential. Against RCB, those flaws were not exposed so much as amplified. (espncricinfo.com) RCB made the point brutally. They posted 250 for 3, the highest total ever made against CSK in IPL history. Phil Salt and Devdutt Padikkal set the platform, but the innings turned savage at the end. Tim David finished unbeaten on 70 from 25 balls. Rajat Patidar made 48 from 19. In the 19th over alone, David took 30 from Jamie Overton. One six traveled 106 meters and cleared the stadium roof. This was not a tense rivalry game that slipped away late. It was a demonstration of what a settled, aggressive side looks like when it meets an attack that cannot stop the bleeding. (iplt20.com) CSK’s chase had moments, but not the kind that change outcomes. They lost Sanju Samson, Ruturaj Gaikwad, and Ayush Mhatre almost immediately. Sarfaraz Khan hit 50 from 25 and Prashant Veer added 43, while Jamie Overton struck 37 from 16, but the target was already absurd. CSK were bowled out for 207 in 19.4 overs and lost by 43 runs. That score would win plenty of T20 matches. At the Chinnaswamy, against this RCB lineup, it mostly served to underline how far behind they already were. (espncricinfo.com) There is a temptation to turn every CSK setback into a story about nostalgia. This one is simpler than that. Dhoni’s absence is real, but it is not the whole explanation. CSK have now opened with three straight defeats, and the pattern is clear: the attack has been too hittable, the combinations still look unsettled, and the margin for error has vanished early. RCB, meanwhile, have won three in a row against CSK before this and made it four with a scoreline that felt even wider than 43 runs. The image that lingers is not abstract. It is Tim David launching a ball over the roof in Bengaluru while CSK, again, searched for a way to slow the game down. (espncricinfo.com)