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Follow Us“MS Dhoni hands over the captaincy of the Chennai Super Kings to Ruturaj Gaikwad.”
And that’s how Gaikwad’s life changed in one sentence.
From not having enough “spark” to becoming one of the mainstays of the yellow batting order, and now becoming the heir to the legendary Dhoni. Gaikwad had attained something in four years that senior CSK pros like Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja would have given their pinky finger for.
MS Dhoni is still on the team, hovering large over the young skipper. Even the broadcasters had Dhoni’s picture opposite Cummins, not Gaikwad’s. In all this, it’s not easy being Ruturaj Gaikwad.
Now, let’s come to the cricket part.
CSK’s top order has been more brittle than 24-carat gold in IPL 2024. So much so that going into this game, their opening wicket had gone down four times before they skipped past 10 runs and only once did they cross the 50+ mark for the opening partnership. Meanwhile, with Rachin Ravindra and Ajinkya Rahane struggling this season, all responsibilities were on Gaikwad.
The world would have been on his shoulders. But there’s a reason Stephen Fleming and Dhoni chose Gaikwad to lead the CSK into a new era that won’t have Dhoni as its face. And that reason has been visible both in his batting and captaincy this season.
Gaikwad has always been in the anchor mode as a top-order batter. He can get off the blocks quite quickly, but his proclivity to stay and bat long and big made him the fulcrum of CSK’s batting a few years ago. However, with the game progressing at a rapid rate, his 130+ strike rate still painted a very sober figure.
That’s where he improved in the last season and started striking higher against pace, and attacked them in the powerplay with a higher intensity. In fact, before 2023, his strike rate in the powerplay never crossed 120.
He took his time and then accelerated.
But since 2023, he has a much more aggressive approach, striking at 146.8 in 2023 and 149.6 in 2024 during the first six overs. His dot % has never been lower, and his boundary % has never been higher in any year.
Hence, it’s not only a new season for Gaikwad in terms of leading the team but also a season where CSK desperately needed Gaikwad the batter.
Today, i.e. April 28, against Sunrisers Hyderabad, Gaikwad was 33 (17)* at the end of the powerplay, scoring almost two runs every ball he faced.
His battle against T Natarajan and Shahbaz Ahmed had many experts excited as he has been troubled by left-arm pacers. To make matters worse, he even got out to Ahmed in their fixture earlier. However, he hit Shahbaz for two fours using the deapth of the crease and drove and cut him with relative ease. He struck three scintillating boundaries against Bhuvneshwar and punished Natarajan with a straight boundary too.
CSK were 50/1, and Rahane’s dismissal had no effect on them whatsoever, just because their young captain there was holding the fort and leading the attack at the same time.
His batting in the middle overs phase has been refreshing as well, as it doesn’t let the momentum gained during the powerplay get lost, and he keeps getting the odd boundaries now and then and relies more on his partners to get the hitting job done.
Daryl Mitchell played that role to perfection today with his fifty, and in the game against Mumbai, it was Shivam Dube who hit 66* off 38 and combined with Gaikwad’s 69 off 40 to take CSK to 206/4 at the end of 20 overs, which turned out to be a match-winning total.
This solidity that Ruturaj provides, along with circumspect acceleration, has allowed CSK to paper over the cracks in their middle order, as, except for Dube, none of their middle-order batters have managed to give them consistent runs.
That’s why his average of 97 with a strike rate of 144.78 in the middle overs has been a boon for CSK.
Against the Sunrisers, he fell short by two runs, and as he returned back after playing a hero innings, Chepauk was absolutely hooting on his dismissal. No one cared that their skipper missed a well-deserved century by two runs. All they cared about was the Thala Dharisanam that was about to begin.
You see, this is the duality of Gaikwad’s existence as a skipper. And he seems to have accepted it as well. That’s why he comes and praises Dhoni saying that “The young wicketkeeper scoring those three sixes helped us a lot. That proved to be the difference.”
He knows what his team’s fans want and speaks exactly that. He knows what his team needs regarding performance, and his bat does that.
While Thala Dharisanam might have stolen his thunder today, it won’t be able to do so for a long time. The knowledgeable Chennai crowd recognises that Ruturaj Gaikwad is the leader they need and deserve. Now, let's see how long the broadcasters and other experts take to see that.
