Where did the Chennai Super Kings land last year?
Fifth, following Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) pipped on net run-rate, with seven wins and losses, qualified for the playoffs.
New developments in IPL 2025
CSK hardly does ‘new’ in a major sense. Their success has come mostly from their stability in personnel and approach; five IPL trophies and two in the past four seasons. Some of their ‘new’ this year is also old. After some years apart, R Ashwin, Sam Curran, and Vijay Shankar return to the franchise. Also bought back was Devon Conway, who missed IPL 2024 with injury.
Though they are not normally strong on wristspin or mystery spin, CSK lavished INR 10 crore on Noor Ahmad, the 20-year-old left-arm wristpinner from Afghanistan. When conditions call for it, he forms a strong spin attack with Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.
At No. 3, Rahul Tripathi is scheduled to slide in; Ajinkya Rahane and Robin Uthappa have recently played this part.
With players like Rahane, Uthappa, and Shivam Dube enjoying a comeback at CSK, the team has come to view as one that may help declining IPL careers to be rebuilt. Along with Tripathi and Vijay Shankar, they also acquired Shreyas Gopal, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, and Deepak Hooda – five players whose IPL futures have been ruined in previous seasons.
Mostly best XII
1 Ruturaj Gaikwad (capt), 2 Devon Conway/Rachin Ravindra, 3 Rahul Tripathi 4 Deepak Hooda / Vijay Shankar 5 Shivam Dube is Six Sam Curran, Seven Ravindra Jadeja, 8MS Dhoni (wk), nine R Ashwin, Tenth Noor Ahmad/Nathan Ellis, eleven Matheesha Pathirana, twelve Khaleel Ahmed
Big query
For CSK, who ought to open?
Navindra and Gaikwad
Conway and GIKwad
Conway and Ravindra with Gaikwad at No. 3
Alert yourself for
Also indicating a return to the well-known spin-to–win approach at Chepauk are the high bids for Ashwin and Noor – CSK’s left-arm fingerspin, Gopal’s legspin, and Hooda’s part-time offspin. The fast bowlers in IPL 2024 claimed 74 wickets while the spinners only claimed 25 at the venue. Chepauk gave the quicks crisp bounce and pace even during the ODI World Cup in 2023; yet, that might change with IPL 2025.
Curran is not part of England’s teams in any capacity right now, but the selectors will find it difficult to overlook a big IPL season. Promoting Jadeja up the order did not generate the kind of result CSK had in mind for IPL 2024. Curran will be useful with the ball in the end overs, particularly at Chepauk; he bats mostly at No. 4 for Desert Vipers in the UAE’s ILT20 and is more suited to float in the batting line-up.
Apart from Curran, CSK’s abundance of all-arounders – Dube, Jadeja, Ashwin, Vijay Shankar, Hooda, Ravindra, Jamie Overton among others – guarantees they will never run short of bowling choices or batting depth.
Important facts
With an IPL 2024 strike rate of 220.54, MS Dhoni’s highest across all seasons. Including 13 sixes and 14 fours, he clattered 161 off 73 balls. Will he be able to have a like impact at the death this year at the age of forty-three?
Dube has a strike rate of around 159 against spin since he joined CSK in 2022; this is the highest among 13 hitters against this range of bowling for minimum of 30 IPL innings.
CSK sees Khaleel Ahmed as a replacement for Deepak Chahar for good reason: in IPL 2024 he grabbed eight wickets in 14 innings in the powerplay at an economy rate of 8.87 during this period. More powerplay wickets than Khaleel last season were selected by only Trent Boult, Mitchell Starc, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, and Vaibhav Arora.
Who is out and who is dubious?
Although TNPL star Gurjapneet Singh, who missed the second phase of the Ranji Trophy with injury, is fit once more, it is difficult to see another left-arm fit into their XI or XII since Curran and Khaleel are CSK’s front-left seamers. Right now, CSK has every player on call for choice.