Jadeja in no-man's land as CSK's plans just won't work

Ravindra Jadeja was following the plan. He was 31 off 23 at the start of the 18th over. Now was the time to go.

Chennai Super Kings (CSK) do not have the confidence in their batting line-up to hit hard from the first ball. They fear that will lead them to below-par totals and kick them out of the match before their bowlers can get a say. So many of the statistics that have them at the bottom - run-rate in the powerplay, or even overall, for that matter - is by design. It isn't a good design, but it is what the players they have and the form they are in has left them with.

CSK were 145 for 4. Jadeja was set. And Mumbai Indians (MI) gave him a left-arm spinner to target. The over went for a-run-a-ball and that was only because it had wides. Mitchell Santner doesn't normally bowl in the death. Prior to this game, he had bowled only one full over in the block between 17 and 20 in IPL 2025. But MI saved him for exactly this match-up; a match-up where the stock ball spins into the batter's hitting arc.

Several teams have gone to spin with Jadeja at the crease to shut him down. He's faced 58 balls of it and scored only 51 runs. This is in keeping with his returns over the last few years. He has turned himself into a pace hitter, but he's always struggled when it's taken off.

CSK head coach Stephen Fleming would like to see Jadeja do better. "There's a lot of room for improvement in our view and it's a little bit of opportunity," he said. "I know in the past that he's done it for a couple of games but he hasn't had a big run at it and it's more the attitude towards it."

In other words, a willingness to hit the ball hard. Jadeja, in this season, has only hit two boundaries against spin. Sometimes it doesn't even look like he's trying. That's why he's had to face a lot of it, even in the death. Fleming is trying to fix this.

"So we're exploring a lot of things at the moment to see whether there are gains within the side with one view on trying to win every game remaining in the IPL but also in the future," he said. "So we think there are areas that we can explore with our players where they haven't perhaps conquered it in the past and just trying to change some attitudes around it."

Jadeja's training session ahead of the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) game lasted about a half hour where he faced two legspinners and a throwdown specialist. His focus was on being able to step out of his crease and nailing the slog sweep. He had mixed results. He's not the only one.

Over the last ten years of IPL cricket, and looking at performances in the first eight matches of the season, CSK's average (18.84) and strike rate (110) against spin puts them in the bottom five on both counts. The one player that they actually have who is good at hitting boundaries when pace is taken off the ball, is unable to play that role because he's having to cover for other frailties.

"We need the run production from the top to go well," Fleming said. "And that will then put players in the right position to be able to perform their role that they've been designed for and enable us to then capitalise on the strengths that some of our players have. [Shivam] Dube is playing a number of roles. He's holding the innings together and finishing games. In the past he's been an impactful player that's come out and changed the game by his dominance in the middle [overs]. So there's been a bit of a shift somewhere through the necessity to stay in the game."

The good CSK teams of the past were able to mask their players' weaknesses. That's why they had Jadeja down the order - not because he was a finisher but because if he batted at No. 7 or 8 he'd get to face fast bowling and he's good at smashing that. Now though, when there is weakness everywhere - their top-order is not scoring runs, their middle order hasn't been able to pick up the slack - it's left the team incredibly vulnerable. This CSK has spent the season breaking things that were working well to fix things that keep going wrong.