Did “CSK deserve to lose”?
The concept of ‘Deserve this lose/win’ is quite baffling. There are numerous occasions in cricket where a team that has been stupendous throughout the tournament has failed in the most important match. Kohli had an insane season in 2016 where he took RCB to the finals and expected them to win the trophy against a comparatively weaker SRH side. Unfortunately on an all-important day, they couldn’t pull it off one more time and they lost the trophy to SRH. Did RCB deserved to win means SRH deserved to lose? Nope, it was just SRH day that they clicked better than RCB.
Another example is the ICC WC semifinal between NZ and India. Similar to RCB, India had an amazing tournament. Rohit hit 5 centuries I guess. But when it mattered, factors like Rain postponing the match to the next day and conditions favored NZ who eventually won the match. Neither of the teams deserves to win or lose. It’s just that the other team has had a better field day than the opponent.
Coming back to CSK, they have taken awful decisions throughout this season. Not bringing in Tahir, sustaining with Jadhav instead of Jagdeesan, and bowler rotation by Dhoni has been very much questionable. Doesn’t mean they “deserve to lose”. It’s just the wrath of our frustration that the team management ain’t thinking the same way as we thought and unfortunately, the plan devised by the management not producing results makes the decisions made debatable.
In the 2007 WT20 final, Dhoni gave 20th over to Joginder Sharma instead of Harbhajan. Coz he believed that Joginder Sharma will be able to pull it off. Gladly, he pulled it off as well. Dhoni is known for such weird decisions and planning. In the 2018 match against KXIP, CSK were in trouble as they lost 3 wickets for some 20 odd runs while chasing 150 something. Dhoni sent Chahar as 3 down to disrupt the plans of the opposition captain. The plan worked as Chahar’s promotion restrained a collapse and CSK won the game. Before quoting nonsense like deserve to lose/win, just imagine if all the decisions taken in the past hadn’t provided the results we intended, Dhoni will not be who he is today.
In particular, Dhoni doesn’t believe in matchups and statistics much which he even quoted it a couple of matches before “It can be maneuvered in the way we want to” and is often known for his instinctive decision making which has provided him the enormous success that he’s enjoying right now. The thing that one should note is not every time his decisions work and most importantly Dhoni is way too rigid and helms the top spot in decision making for the franchise. Dhoni has always revoked the idea of constantly changing the team has always wanted the players he is comfortable within the team(The only reason I can think of for Jadhav’s repeated opportunities in the team). Sadly, Dhoni couldn’t pull off the wins this year which would have kept the critics silent.
On a final note, nobody deserves to win or lose. They have their day and the team that fares better wins the match on a given day. This is probably the end of the Dhoni era for CSK. Neither his decisions are going on his way nor can he compensate them with his bat. Having provided enough joy for the fans in the last 12 years, time we accept this downfall and move on.
