Chennai Super Kings (CSK) captain MS Dhoni didn’t hesitate in throwing the franchise’s batters under the bus as he blamed his side’s poor show with the bat behind the defeat against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 on Friday. CSK made a couple of changes in the team, with Dewald Brevis and Deepak Hooda coming into the side in the must-win game while Rachin Ravindra was dropped. Despite the changes, CSK failed to get themselves off to a solid start, with the team losing Shaik Rasheed on the very first delivery of the match.

After the game, Dhoni didn’t shy away from criticising the batters for failing to get the team off to a flying start yet against this season.

“We kept losing wickets, and in the first innings the wicket was slightly better and 155 is not a justifiable score, because it wasn’t turning a lot. Yes, after the 8-10th over, it became slightly two-paced when it comes to the fast bowlers, but nothing that was out of the ordinary, I feel we could have put few more runs on the board. Yes, second innings there was a bit of help, our spinners the quality was there and they bowled in the right areas and it was stopping a bit but we were short by 15-20 runs,” he said.

CSK’s innings got some stability in the middle order as debutant Dewald Brevis scored a quick-fire 42 off 25 balls. But barring him, none of the batters played with the momentum the team needed.

“I think he (Brevis) batted really well and we need something like that in the middle order where we have slightly struggled when the spinners come in, that’s a time we need to either you do it by batsmanship, where you pick up your areas or try to play the big shot in your area, I feel that’s where we have been lacking and not been really able to dominate or get runs against spinners at good pace in the middle,” Dhoni said on the South African prodigy.

While CSK’s spinners produced a fine fightback to keep the team in the game for a long duration, Dhoni feels the batters just aren’t putting enough runs on the board this campaign.

“In a tournament like this, if you have one or two areas where you can plug in the holes it is good, but if majority of your players are not doing well, it becomes very difficult, because you have to do a few changes, but if majority are doing well then you guy those guys that extra few games and if it doesn’t work out than you move onto the next one, but if 4 of them are not performing at the same time, you are bound to make that change, because you can’t just keep on going because we are not putting enough runs on the board, because it is essential right now, the game has changed. I am not saying it is always 180-200, but assess the conditions and then look to put the runs on the board,” the Thala concluded.