CSK were let down by poor batsmanship: MS Dhoni

Chennai Super Kings skipper MS Dhoni held his side’s batting responsible for the loss against Royal Challengers Bangalore on Wednesday, and claimed that the target of 174 could have been chased down by the Super Kings had their players shown better ‘batsmanship’.  Winning the toss and bowling first, the Super Kings restricted RCB to 173, thanks to fine showings from the spin trio of Ravindra Jadeja, Moeen Ali and Maheesh Theekshana. 

They were cruising in the chase at one point, with Gaikwad and Conway bringing up the team’s fifty inside the powerplay, but faltered with time and eventually fell 13 short of RCB’s total.

Speaking post the game, Dhoni insisted that his side were not smart enough with the bat, and claimed that the CSK batters did not play the situation well.

"We did well to restrict them to 170 runs. What really let us down was the batsmanship,” Dhoni said post the game.

“I feel especially when we are chasing, you know what's required on the board and what the bowlers are doing. At times you have to curb your instinct and try to see what the situation is demanding rather than just play your shot. If the batsmanship had been slightly better, maybe in the last few overs we wouldn't have needed many runs. 

“We got off to a good start, we had wickets in hand and the wicket kept getting better. It's just that we kept losing wickets at regular intervals. If you take care of those things, chasing is more about calculation and batting first is more about instinct. As a batter in the middle, you have to decide on those things.”

CSK badly needed a win to stay in the race for the playoffs, but with 6 points in 10 games, they are now all but out of contention for Top 4. When quizzed how the Super Kings will approach the rest of the season, with playoff dreams all but dashed, Dhoni stated that the team will look to correct mistakes and execute plans better. 

“We need to keep looking at what went wrong. It's easy to get distracted by how many points you have. It's the process that matters more than where you are positioned in the points table. If you take care of those things, then the points table will take care of itself,” Dhoni said.