Chennai Super Kings (CSK) have almost been pushed to the brink of exit from the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 play-off race after their recent loss to Royal Challengers Bangalore on Wednesday. They have now lost seven out of 10 matches to be placed ninth in the 10-team league. Their team combination has also not been settled. While Ravindra Jadeja was named the captain at the start of the season, after eight matches MS Dhoni was named the skipper with the former deciding to focus on his own game. There have been shortcomings in the other departments too.

All this has left Virender Sehwag, former Indian cricket team player, dissatisfied. “The first mistake they did was at the start of the season when they announced that MS Dhoni won’t be captaining and it will be Ravindra Jadeja. I think that was a wrong decision. Also I think, if Jadeja was the captain if he should have been sustained for the rest of the seasons,” Sehwag told Cricbuzz after CSK were more or less knocked out of playoff contention after suffering a 13-run loss to RCB.

“There was no settled playing XI. Ruturaj Gaikwad didn’t score runs in the beginning. The batters didn’t score runs. In one match MS Dhoni scored. In other the match Gaikwad scored. The match where Dhoni hit boundaries in the last over, that game was also almost lost. They started poorly, then batters did not score, from there on the season went haywire. 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,” Sehwag added.

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In the match, Harshal Patel and Glenn Maxwell led a clinical bowling performance to help Royal Challengers Bangalore register a 13-run win over Chennai Super Kings, pushing the defending champions to the brink of elimination in the IPL here on Wednesday.
The quartet of Mahipal Lomror, who smashed a 27-ball 42, skipper Faf du Plessis (38 off 22), Virat Kohli (30 off 33) and Dinesh Karthik (27 not out off 17) did well to lift RCB to 173 for 8.

RCB bowlers then restricted the defending champions to 160 for 8, despite a fifty by opener Devon Conway (56).