Chennai Super Kings are in the eighth spot in IPL 2020 and MS Dhoni has admitted that their playoff hopes are more or less over after suffering a loss to the Rajasthan Royals. The three-time IPL champions have had a chaotic start to IPL 2020, with their build-up affected due to the coronavirus scare in their team as well as the withdrawal of Suresh Raina and Harbhajan Singh due to ‘personal reasons’. Now, Chennai Super Kings are set to get a further jolt with the withdrawal of Dwayne Bravo for the remainder of the IPL. Dwayne Bravo, who suffered a groin injury during the game against Delhi Capitals and could not bowl the final over, will play no further part in the tournament. In an interview to ANI, Chennai Super Kings CEO Kasi Viswanathan confirmed that Bravo will not feature in any more games for the franchise in IPL 2020.
“No, Bravo isn’t playing any more part this time around and the groin injury has ruled him out. He will be flying back in a day or two,” Viswanathan said.
Respect decisions
Suresh Raina had to return home due to family reasons and ace off-spinner Harbhajan Singh too decided against flying into UAE for the 13th edition. When asked if the absence of these two made a lot of difference as the CSK unit could for the first time end at the bottom of the points table, the CEO said decisions have always been respected in the franchise irrespective of whether a player is senior or junior.
"Undoubtedly Raina and Harbhajan are both vital cogs in the CSK unit and they were missed. But you have to respect personal decisions and that is how we function irrespective of whether it is a senior or junior player," he explained. Raina, one of the top run-getters in the league, flew back after having arrived in UAE with the team. His absence saw the unit try out a number of options in the middle-order, but the likes of Kedar Jadhav could not match up to Raina’s numbers. Harbhajan though made himself unavailable from India and while that opened the doors for the likes of Piyush Chawla and Karn Sharma, the duo couldn’t make much of the opportunities handed to them.
While Chawla finished with six wickets from seven games at an economy rate of 9.09, Karn had a slightly better economy of 8.66 as he bagged four wickets from as many games. Ravindra Jadeja, too, failing to bring home the numbers in the bowling department has hurt CSK and Dhoni’s chances as the left-arm spinner managed just 4 wickets from the 10 games that he had played. With Bravo ruled out, Chennai Super Kings is likely to bring last year’s purple cap, Imran Tahir, into the playing XI for the remaining four games.
