Chennai Super Kings skipper MS Dhoni says that the demands of captaincy impacted Ravindra Jadeja’s game and that led to the dip in the all-rounder’s performance.
Jadeja was appointed CSK captain at the start of the ongoing IPL 2022 season, but he handed back the responsibility to veteran Dhoni after Chennai only managed two wins from the first eight matches.
MS Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja talk to each other during an IPL match. Sportzpics
On Sunday, CSK defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad by 13 runs to get back to winning ways in Dhoni’s first match of the season as a captain.
“I think Jadeja knew last season he’d be captaining this year. For the first two games, I oversaw his work and let him be later. After that, I insisted he’d take his own decisions and responsibility for them.
“Once you become captain, it means a lot of demands come in. But it affected his mind as the tasks grew. I think captaincy burdened his prep and performances,” Dhoni said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
Dhoni also says that the decision to make Jadeja captain was his own.
“He knew and got enough time to prepare, what is important is you want him to lead the side and I wanted that transition to happen. At the end of the season, you don’t want him to feel as the captaincy was done by someone else and I’m just going for toss.
“So it was a gradual transition. Spoon-feeding doesn’t really help captain, on the field you have to take those crucial decisions and you have to take responsibility for those decisions.
“Once you become the captain, we have to take care of lot many things and that also includes your own game,” he said.
Dhoni hopes Jadeja would find his form back now that he is not a captain.
“Even if you relieve captainship and if you are at your best and that’s what we want. We were also losing a great fielder, we are struggling for a deep mid-wicket fielder, still we have dropped 17-18 catches and that’s a matter of concern.
“These are tough games and hopefully we will come back strong, important to communicate with the bowlers,” he said.
About the match, Dhoni says that overall good cricket helped CSK beat SRH.
“It was a good score to start off. I did nothing different, it’s not like much changes with the change of captain. The target we got was a good one, dew comes in so the bowling needed to be good.
“The spinners did well in the 7-14 over period, that was key to the win and gave a surplus of runs which we could fall back on.”
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