CSK's transition 'will develop on its own' even if Dhoni leaves, says Bangar

If you lose ten of your 13 games in an IPL season, chances are that everything, from top to bottom and even beyond, will come under scrutiny. Such is life for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) as they look to finish their commitments for the IPL 2025 season and go back to the drawing board, and when they do, Sanjay Bangar wants MS Dhoni to say "enough", and Aakash Chopra wants seven - seven! - players to be released.

"I've got a long list actually. I would release [R] Ashwin, [Ravindra] Jadeja, Rachin Ravindra, Devon Conway, Vijay Shankar, Deepak Hooda, Rahul Tripathi..." Chopra said in response to a question on ESPNcricinfo's Time Out show after CSK's latest defeat, this time to Rajasthan Royals (RR).

Dhoni's name didn't figure in Chopra's list, but Bangar doesn't expect to see Dhoni playing one more season.

"I think at 43 it's very tough to play in that competitive environment. When you're 43, why this competitive environment, even if you go and play some local cricket, you will find how tough it is on the body as well," Bangar said in response to the question that has been asked pretty much every IPL season of late.

"It all boils down to MS, but if I was MS, I would say 'enough'. 'Okay, I have played whatever I wanted to play, I have looked after the interest of the franchise', if there's any, if that was the motivation. But, you know, you move on.

"By you being there, if you're thinking that the transition will happen fast, there's never an ideal time to pick. So you might as well [make] peace with the fact that, 'okay, even if I leave now, the franchise will develop on its own; it will take a year longer, but I'm not going to be here for the entire cycle'. That's how I would look at MS' position if I was in that position."

Whether Dhoni chooses to stay or go, CSK could well be looking at an overhaul after what has been a horror season that started to turn pear-shaped early on, and only got worse. One of the players - another CSK veteran - who has come in for scrutiny is Jadeja, who was moved up to No. 4 and has struggled on more occasions than he has not.

"Probably trade him. You have Dewald Brevis as your No. 4. I will bat him at No. 4 [instead of Jadeja]," Chopra said. "And I am thinking that this won't be the one-two-three any which way. This is a stopgap arrangement where you've got Devon Conway with Ayush Mhatre [opening] and Urvil Patel at No. 3. That is not going to be your one-two-three.

"If you are releasing Rachin Ravindra and Devon Conway, it's common sense that you will find somebody who can be an absolute banker at the top and probably [even] a destructor at the top. Why would you want Ruturaj Gaikwad to bat again with somebody who is not going hammer and tongs? I want to have Urvil Patel at three [and] I would rather have one more [overseas] guy... I mean, they need Noor Ahmad and [Matheesha] Pathirana, then you need two batters: either you get a finisher with Dewald Brevis, or you get a top-order batter with Dewald Brevis."

Like Chopra, Stephen Fleming, the CSK coach, said at the press conference after the loss to RR that the batting order was far from what the team had wanted, and it was just "patching innings up" at this point.

"Our order is not right at this stage," Fleming said. "That's something that we are always looking to rejig. We've got some strong ideas for next year so that all facets are covered. But that hasn't been possible this year because [of] lack of runs at the top. A lot of the batting positions are determined by how well a start we have, and then guys can fall into line. So we haven't had that, so we've been just patching innings up, really, rather than constructing good innings."

The loss of Gaikwad, the captain, to an injury early on in the season was one setback that CSK, who have had many underperforming batters, couldn't recover from.

Bangar was also hoping for a sea change in terms of the approach for CSK between the end of the current season and the start of the next one.

"If there are batters right at the top who are striking really well, and you have batters below you as well who are striking well in Brevis and in this case Shivam Dube - and they were hoping for better returns from all these players - do you require a player who has to do a particular job of holding that innings together as well," he said when asked about Sam Curran often batting at No. 3 and Jadeja at No. 4. In fact, against RR, there was no Curran, but Ashwin at No. 4 and Jadeja at No. 5, which Chopra and Bangar agreed was far from ideal.