MS Dhoni Is About To Make His Final Appearance In IPL 2023
In this season of the IPL, MS Dhoni gears up to play for the final time for his franchise but the skipper of Chennai Super Kings has already scripted his lasting legacy for his franchise. In the previous season of the IPL, during a fan interaction online someone had asked if their beloved Thala shall play one last game at Chepauk. MSD assured him with a smile and said that his final game will be at Chepauk. And finally, that time has come when a great cricketing journey in IPL is about to end.
Even though the fans of CSK shall have to wait for another four days more to watch their Thala take on the field of Chepauk but Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium will get the first glimpse of him in this final season of his career.
Away from the arc lights this man from Jharkhand has been quietly training for this moment of his IPL career. He had practiced in his hometown at Ranchi for two months. At the beginning of March, he flew to Chennai and started his practice regime. So right now he is completely ready for this tournament after undergoing three months of grind. He holds the record as a captain for his franchisee winning a hundred and twenty-three games and losing eighty-six of them.
Dhoni who is now forty-one years of age is aware that he is no longer the player he used to be at one point in time. He has played his final international match in 2019 and after that only played the IPL games where he has not been that much productive. He had struggled against quality bowling, timings, and no longer was capable of finishing the matches the way he used to do at some point in his career. Yet somehow he had managed to hit a last-ball boundary, one of the trademark shots against the Mumbai Indians in the previous season.
Even though over the last two seasons of the IPL he has been subdued as a batsman but he was very much noticeable for his captaincy skills. The adamant bosses of his franchise were always of the opinion that in IPL captaincy matters as equally as batting or bowling so they always kept having Dhoni as their skipper. They also gave freedom to him on playing as long as he wished. But Dhoni was aware that he needed to contribute with the bat as well.
The fans of Dhoni know that he does not believe in holding on to a position but to ensure a smooth transition so that the quality of the game from CSK remains the same. He had already experimented with giving Jadeja the reigns of captaincy in the previous season but the result was a disaster which made him take back control again. At one point Jadeja had even wanted to leave the CSK but on Dhoni’s advice, he held on. But he refuses to be the captain and so this time Dhoni will try to groom Ruturaj Gaikwad for the position and take care of a few other aspects of his team as he plays the final season of his IPL journey.
