We were shell-shocked: CSK head coach Fleming accepts after defeat

You don’t hear this often, but the head coach of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) acknowledged that his team got “shell-shocked” under the “onslaught of pressure” due to the “high calibre batting” from Shubman Gill and Sai Sudharsan.

Batting first, Gill and Sudharsan, who aren’t regular opening partners for Gujarat Titans (GT), put up a record-equalling 210 runs opening stand to stun CSK. The pair started moderately but accelerated extraordinarily to take GT from 58/0 in 6 overs to 209/0 in 17 overs. 

This threw CSK’s plans into disarray, resulting in a comedy of errors usually unseen from them, including dropped catches. 

“I think we were through Plan B and Plan C pretty quickly and maybe started getting into Plan D," CSK head coach Stephen Fleming said with a slight smile in the post-match press conference. 

“It was the batting of high calibre. Sometimes, you have to doff the cap and say well played, and on this occasion, I thought those two were great. We were pretty shell-shocked, and even our fielding, which has been good over the years, was put on the back foot. There were dropped catches, which was a little bit unusual for us.”

While Sudharsan and Gill were going gung ho, the CSK skipper brought in slow medium pacer Daryl Mitchell to bowl. Mitchell played mainly as a batter for CSK and had bowled only once in the season, which also happened against GT, but at Chepauk, where he bowled two overs for 18 and picked up a wicket. However, he was punished mercilessly by the GT openers in Ahmedabad and gave away 52 runs in his four overs. 

“He [Skipper Ruturaj Gaikwad] saw with Mitchell an opportunity to change the pace of the game,” Fleming said, explaining why Mitchell had to bowl his full quota on the day. 

“And to be fair, we were trying to find a way to stop them, but at this stage, there wasn’t any assistance anywhere. He [Mitchell] did a good job. We could have chopped and changed in the middle, but we were shell-shocked. We were put on the back foot, there was an onslaught of pressure, and we were late to respond.”

Mitchell's bowling in the middle also had to do with the absences and injuries that have plagued CSK’s bowling attack, as they are missing key pacers in Matheesha Pathirana, Mustafizur Rahman and Deepak Chahar. 

“We were a little bit handicapped by the absence of some Players. But the players playing this game did well in the last one, and their confidence was pretty high. However, they were against high calibre batting, and that made us look a bit sloppy,” Fleming accepted. 

CSK have two games remaining, and they can still look to qualify relatively comfortably because they have the second-best net run rate this season (+0.491). 

If they win both their remaining games, against Rajasthan at home and against Bengaluru at the Chinnaswamy, then they’ll shoot themselves to 16 points and may even have a crack at the top two, depending on some other results. 

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