Trust the wily Mahendra Singh Dhoni to slip in a jab under the veneer of his trademark calm.
Moments after wowing a Chinnaswamy Stadium with a stunning 34-ball 70, which helped Chennai Super Kings chase down 205 against Royal Challengers Bangalore in April, MS Dhoni was as usual asked about the secret of the perfect chase.
Without dwelling too much on the specifics, he revealed, “What’s important in a chase is to know which bowler has how many (overs) left and who the captain will bowl when, and you play accordingly.”
The tone was general but Dhoni could have just as easily been talking about the match that had just taken place. By the ninth over of CSK’s chase, Umesh Yadav, who is currently RCB’s highest wicket-taking bowler, had bowled out. By the 13th, Yuzvendra Chahal, who had taken two key wickets, was done with his quota.
Feasting on a combination of Pawan Negi, Mohammed Siraj and Corey Anderson, who was incredibly given the last over, Dhoni and Ambati Rayudu went hell for leather to pull off a chase for the ages.
Chahal epitomises RCB’s doom
The curious case of Chahal perfectly epitomises RCB’s disastrous 2018 Indian Premier League season. While he’s recently made a name for himself in the Indian colours, the 27-year-old has been a standout performer for Kohli’s RCB for quite a few seasons now. In the 2015 and 2016 seasons, he took 23 and 21 wickets respectively at a bowling average of below 20.
A player of Chahal’s calibre should be a potent weapon for RCB – one they can utilise at crunch situations, especially in the death, right? Well, the 27-year-old has only bowled three times after the 15th over in RCB’s 10 games this season.
Against Kings XI Punjab in RCB’s second match of the IPL season, Chahal was called on to bowl just the 19th over, conceded 10 runs and got the wicket of Ravichandran Ashwin. Against Delhi Daredevils, when delivering the 16th over, Chahal got Maxwell but was biffed for 14. Perhaps that put Virat Kohli off, because the next time the leg-spinner was called on to bowl in the death, Chennai needed just 22 off 18 which Dhoni polished off in style.
Of course, RCB have a problem at the death this season – almost every cricket expert worth their salt knows it and that has probably been the number one reason why the team languishes at sixth place on the table, almost certainly out of the running for the playoffs for the second consecutive year. But yet, if you take a good, hard look at their death bowling choice this IPL, there’s one defining theme: rigidity.
Pace isn’t always pace, yaar
Pace, pace, pace. Whether it’s Anderson, Colin de Grandhomme, Mohammed Siraj, Chris Woakes or Tim Southee, RCB’s only approach at this critical period seems to be to throw the pacers on and pray they come off. It obviously hasn’t worked – the team is right up there when it comes to conceding the most number of runs in the death this season. But what is even more problematic is the rigidity of persisting with this task despite having the option to experiment with Chahal and not taking it.
Virat Kohli’s choices look even more baffling when you compare it to the tactics some of the other teams have used. Sunil Narine, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Rashid Khan have been used liberally by their captains at the death. Teams are willing to experiment and go for other options when a plan doesn’t work. But Kohli seems to want to follow the template without giving too much thought. While giving his pace attack his due, his refusal to employ one of India’s best current spinners is a little mystifying.
Where are the Kohli theatrics?
The fact that we’re even using the word “template” while referring to Kohli’s captaincy is worrying by itself. But it is gaining currency with every RCB loss. Troublingly still, as they are piling up, Kohli seems to be growing increasingly weary.
His post-match monologues have mostly been variations of “We aren’t good enough”, delivered in anger at the beginning of the tournament and now, lapsing into a routine. He knows what his team’s problems are – and he seems to have thrown up his hands at it, resigned to the fate that only one-off performances from him or AB De Villiers can take this team to victory.
Yet if Kohli needed some inspiration, he doesn’t need to look far. Just across his state, for example, where MS Dhoni hasn’t just rediscovered his form, but also the captaincy credentials that made him one of India’s greatest ever captains.
It’s not that his team hasn’t had issues. From Faf du Plessis to Suresh Raina to Imran Tahir to Lungi Ngidi, there have been plenty of ins-and-outs within the Super Kings squad this season due to a mix of injuries and family reasons.
Yet, Dhoni has managed to find a way to adapt and buckle down accordingly. The Chennai Super Kings have used a lot of players themselves but it’s never seemed a sign of desperation – on the contrary, Dhoni’s been conducting his own experiments, not afraid to back his instincts or try something a new tactic.
The Dhoni way
In a way, the Indian Premier League has demonstrated how much of an influence Dhoni has on Kohli’s captaincy career. The RCB captain is in a rut and needs a way out. He needs a figure like Dhoni in his team – clearing his head, taking charge when required, spotting a tweak, telling the spinners where exactly to bowl and letting Kohli have his hands free to do other things. But most importantly, Dhoni, when he’s playing in the Indian colours, never lets Kohli fall into the template that’s becoming a RCB trademark.
The IPL will end sooner or later but this marks an important juncture for the Indian cricket team’s fortunes as well. The fact that Dhoni has come back into form and more or less, reserved his place for the 2019 World Cup marks good tidings, because on this evidence, an Indian limited-overs team without Dhoni’s trademark influence on it could go downhill very quickly.