Ravindra Jadeja and the Chennai Super Kings captaincy he seemingly didn’t need

Chennai Super Kings’ (CSK) Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 campaign seems to have taken a decisive turn with the win over SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Sunday night and it is no surprise that the win comes after some changes, which were not only needed but inevitable. The replacement of Ravindra Jadeja as skipper with the tried and tested Mahendra Singh Dhoni was something of a natural process as CSK struggled to get off the ground for long periods. It was never going to be easy for Jadeja in the hot seat and as the CSK management and even the two players themselves surely realised, the change was just a matter of time.

CSK began IPL 2022 with four straight losses before getting any points on the table, a poor display, barely better than Mumbai Indians’ nightmare start. Even as CSK played their matches, it was becoming quite evident that the captaincy didn’t quite sit well with Jadeja and much of the decision-making on the field was being done by Dhoni.

Must Read: MS Dhoni says CSK captaincy ‘affected’ Ravindra Jadeja’s mind, ‘burdened his performances’

One is not sure how much of mental preparation Jadeja got to make before he was handed the skipper’s cap, barely two days before CSK’s IPL 2022 campaign began. Dhoni is quite the one for springing surprises with his announcements, be it for India colours and as was in this case, the yellow jersey.

So, we had a situation where Jadeja suddenly found himself going in for the tosses, answering questions there and then after the matches and also having to take so many decisions during the match.

That is simply not Jadeja. The left-hander is one of the most natural cricketers in India, and the world. His seemingly innocuous left-arm spin has been superbly effective for India and also CSK, plus his hitting capacity is legendary.

Not to mention that he is still the most athletic of fielders in India with the best arm.

This athlete and natural cricketer began to drop simple catches, and struggled as a batter. It was like he was playing with half his mind, with the other half, as well his limbs, more focussed to keeping the teetering crown of captaincy steady on his head.

Jadeja is everything a cricketer needs to be but to coin a phrase from his field of passion, making him captain was like trying to rein in a stallion which had a free run of the cricket field.

Captaincy is not for everyone. Jadeja will be at his best when he is left to focus on what he does best, and captaincy is not one of those things. He will invariably be hampered and tied down if he is asked to take responsibility for others and to do 360-degree thinking, beginning with the macro of the basic match plan to the micro of who to bowl next, where to place the field and how to handle things when the chips are down.

Further, it would definitely have been easier for him had CSK made a better start in IPL 2022. Four straight losses would have him seeking answers and finding few. His game was getting affected and inevitably he would seek help from the most natural of mentors – MS Dhoni.

Dhoni himself is a natural as captain. His immense instinct about the game, combined with his abilities with batting or wicket-keeping gloves made him a perfect skipper. Behind the stumps, he had that 360-degree vision which was needed and in front of them, he can still send the cricket ball sailing very far indeed.

So, it would be natural that he would try to take over the CSK ship when it was in very rough seas indeed, not just as an instinct but also as he saw Jadeja struggling with the whole captaincy idea.

There was no question that CSK had to begin thinking out of the box if they wanted to turn things around. With Dhoni in the field, along with several other senior players, and Stephen Fleming in the dugout, Jadeja had immense amount of backing when he became captain. The only person who was doubtful was Jadeja himself, and it showed.

Inevitably, the change came. Surely there was a lot of pressure from the franchise owners that would have made Dhoni change his stance on captaincy.

The changes in the way CSK played their cricket were visible immediately, as the XI saw changes, as did the batting line-up. The plan for the technically sound Ruturaj Gaikwad to take on the SRH speedster Umran Malik was a tactical masterstroke and it ended SRH’s bowling assault immediately.

Classic Dhoni stamp on all of this and sure all concerned, including Jadeja, would be relieved that things were getting closer to normal again for CSK.

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