IPL 2019: CSK’s MS Dhoni says slow surfaces like Chepauk are not good advertisement for the IPL

Chennai Super Kings (CSK) captain MS Dhoni won his fifth game out of six in the ongoing IPL, as they defeated Dinesh Karthik’s Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) by seven wickets in their last encounter at the Chepauk Stadium in Chennai. The match saw KKR being restricted to 108/9 in 20 overs with Deepak Chahar picking 3/20 and Imran Tahir and Harbhajan Singh picking two wickets each.

CSK chased down the total easily after a substantial contribution from Faf du Plessis, but after the match, during the presentation, home captain MS Dhoni was not happy with how the pitch at the MA Chidambaram stadium behaved in all the matches they have played here so far. This includes the opening match against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), where the visitors were bowled out for 70 runs.

After such matches in Chennai and also in Delhi, both the surfaces have come under severe criticism for giving extended help to bowlers and making it tough to score for the batsmen, which is not good for the audience in the stadium, who have come to see batsmen hitting big sixes and fours.

Dhoni says his team don’t want to play on “wickets like these” where spin dominates

The Chennai surface led to a tedious match to watch between CSK and KKR the other night as both team’s batsmen struggled to get bat on ball and even Andre Russell was helpless on a slowish pitch. Dhoni reiterated that such surfaces were not ideal for their side.

“It became like the first game (against Royal Challengers Bangalore). We kept cribbing about the track but we ended up winning the game. I’m happy I performed well, but obviously we’re looking for a better wicket. Nobody wants this type of a wicket. It is because of the soil and heat. It’s too hot here and the pitch curators are doing their best job to give us a good track. But, at the end of the day you can’t help it,” Dhoni was quoted as saying by CricketNext.

“I don’t think we want to play on wickets like these because it becomes too low-scoring and it becomes difficult for the batters to keep going. Also, what happens is it slightly becomes more difficult if you are batting first. As the dew comes in, it slightly becomes easy in the second half,” Dhoni further added.

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