u/EngDict

I can AWP good, looking for teammates that can communicate well and is not toxic.

During Thala era three or four major traits defined CSK. Players' undying loyalty to the team, dominating the league despite looking very casual on the outside, unchanged core players that won matches singlehandedly for CSK, electric match changing fielding effort. Now all those traits are gone. No core is to be found, they might as well release Rutu in the next mega auction, fielding is the sloppiest among all teams, we haven't qualified for playoffs for 3 consecutive years, players are showing signs of being frustrated playing for CSK, despite all that we might still have a couple of match winners but they aren't being prioritised as far as I can see. Only player that's being prioritised right now is Rutu. Honestly Rutu is a huge downgrade to Thala. Thala was a world cup winner before he joined CSK. I really can't remember the tournaments Rutu has won as captain. Only Asian Games comes to mind and India faced Nepal in the finals, it was that unserious tournament. Given all this, the pre-2024 CSK seems like a totally different entity to what it is now. The timeline of this shift and the cause are clear as the day. There's been a massive change in mindset. From being a team of proven conscious competent people the team has become conscious incompetent. Without a player with legacy as large as Thala, the team won't be able to move forward. You can bring in Nishant Kheer or Thicker Shawarma for another 30 crores next year, nothing is going to change. Only proven cricketing brains can fix CSK. The day we realise this and procure that player, we'd be truly back. Until then there's no difference between Punjab Kings and Chennai Super Kings. Atleast Punjab played in finals last year. We're even worse.

CSK has posted this on Instagram with a title "Roaring since day one". Are these the players that MI additionally requested for the trade with Pandya? If so, I'm proud of CSK. You've stood your ground really well. I hope this post ages well.

Rutu is an all format great. He plays with great confidence, skill in all the formats. He doesn't struggle in any kind of pitch. He can score century on a highway, rank turner, bouncy track, swinging conditions. He can play fast, slow and can anchor. He can open or he can play one down as well. He can finish games like he's done for CSK in 2026. But lately I've been seeing that he's been getting a lot of hate from CSK fans, fans have been asking him to be traded away in return for Hardik Pandya. Rutu is so good as a player that even MI feels that trading him for Hardik is too unfair. Rutu is currently being retained by CSK for only 18 crores. 18 crores, can you imagine that - that's just 4 crores more than Prashant Veer whom we're likely to release this year. I think a player of Rutu's potential deserves atleast 30 crores to justify playing in IPL. Since CSK won't pay Rutu 30 crores, I propose that CSK releases Rutu this year so that teams can fight with each other to pay Rutu 30 crores as he deserves and have him in their team. Really, CSK and CSK fans don't know how to treat their players. A match winner like Rutu deserves 30 crores.

Pandya won't play for MI - this is a guarantee. MI's trade offers with every other teams in return for Pandya have been hyper-aggressive to say the least. So just like us other teams too aren't folks with flowers around their ears, so they too ain't gonna agree for the outrageous offers from MI. Worst case he's gonna get sold at auction for <30 crores. So we'll anyways get him if needed, so don't give away outrageous offers like Brevis + 10 crores + Dube in return for Pandya. IDK if there's a rift between CSK management and Shivam Dube due to his performance in yellow. If so, we must look to trade him. Otherwise given him fielding practise as much as possible and pair him with a fast bowling basher to make sure that he'll survive the middle overs. We don't need Pandya if Dube contributes consistently whenever needed.

Auction plan for the tournament should revolve around getting worthy backups for existing players, getting one more finisher preferably Indian, getting a Indian spinner, a couple of proven fast bowlers. Since our requirements for the auction are large, our purse value should also be large. Release Kartik Sharma & Prashant Veer, Rahul Chahar, Matt Short, Matt Henry and we'd have 37 crores in purse, almost similar to last year's purse value. Instead of going entirely on youngsters, CSK should focus on proven or semi proven players. Yes youngsters like Vaibhav Sooryavanshi might be available but I feel it's more a gamble than a guarantee. Cover the holes and our core of Samson, Mhatre, Noor, Overton should be good enough to compensate for the rest of the squad. The rest of the squad only needs to be reliable.

CSK has been flying under the radar as the team that has subpar players on paper but always manages to come up on top. This statement is true on the surface. But look deeper, we did the biggest investment of all teams in buying Dhoni back in 2008. Dhoni was the world class mastermind that build the squad piece by piece and turned CSK into a win accumulating machine. Whether it be induction of proven match winners such as Ashwin, Jadeja, Bravo, Faf, Watson, Pathirana into the team or even underrated match winners such as Bhaji, Rayudu, Uthappa, Rahane, Lord, etc. The struggle that CSK goes through without a top class mastermind is clear as the day. Only with a top tactician, CSK can identify top players each season, full in the gaps with best possible resources and assemble a top winning team. We need a proper replacement for Dhoni for CSK to be "the best" team in the league again.

I think this is the only sensible trade option for Hardik Pandya. Kasi bro has been our grim reaper at the auction table and Rutu is finished as a player being unable to score runs in even in test cricket. Both of these guys are responsible for CSK's downfall in recent times. Think this is the only feasible trade option from CSK's end for Hardik.

Ruturaj Gaikwad has lost his ability to play aggressively and is now a mere shadow of his past self. CSK shouldn't waste resources on him, we already have Karthik Sharma who does the same thing as Rutu that's also a guarantee to play every game. We can't have two anchors on the same team, the ship would just halt forever. Given that we already have a couple of captaincy options, it's time to move on from Rutu. I'm in favour of picking Rutu when an ODI or test version of IPL comes up, until then Rutu should be put into open auction to just see where he stands as a T20 player without any judgement. Let the auction market decide his worth, it's not worthy sacrificing one more year of playoffs of trophy to test out Rutu. CSK isn't the place to test untested players, it's a team with a legacy of consistency that's being ruined by insanely testing the same player over and over again.

CSK's management has an ego problem. The auction picks were all bad (except Akeal but we didn't play him anyways) still the management chose to play them every game for the only reason being to justify the price they were bought for. The sheer fear of having to admit a mistake of huge proportion made the management to make more mistake in making them play. CSK management has also given captaincy for 3 years to Ruturaj and it hasn't paid them well. What does the management do? Continue to back him up as captain with Kasi even going to say on a recent interview (after disqualifying from playoffs) that the team still considers Rutu for the long term. The management is stubborn on their mistakes, still looking over the sunken cost in making decisions for the future. This approach to managing a team would have been helpful if the team was winning. We're losing like we've never done before, our players are getting injured like never before, we're making poor player selection decisions & auction strategies like never before and we still continue to not admit or analyse the mistakes. Until someone like Kasi and the rest of the think tank is fired and replaced with someone credible, with actual results under their own merits, this team won't even come close to being successful again. It's going to be the same season in and season out. CSK was successful earlier was because we had good people on the top making good decisions for the team. There was one late Mr. VB Chandrasekhar who chose to bring in Dhoni instead of Sehwag. We need his successor. Until then this franchise is doomed. Prior to Kasi, we used to be a team whose worst finish was 3rd place and we should have questioned the credibility of the management when we first didn't qualify for playoffs in 2020. The team is only as strong as it's think tank and management. Best thing that can be done now IMO is making Thala the head of the management, CEO of CSK instead of Kasi.

CSK's team looked professional with Dhoni. Now we've gone entertainment first performance next similar to what RCB used to do previously. It's time to professionalise the coaching + support staff setup. We don't need more roar events, we want more success meets post the season. Hope CSK management understands that they're a professional team playing in the biggest T20 league and do the needful.

Among the remaining games, DC's game at Delhi will be arguably the most average difficulty one for CSK. DC is also looking to close the gap and qualify and will bring out their 100%. Winning or losing tomorrow will determine if CSK can also win against KKR, GT and SRH in the games to come. If CSK can bring out their A-game tomorrow, we can be confident for the remainder if games. We've already extracted the best from our bowling unit, our batting needs to improve and find stability in tomorrow's game. The way we play tomorrow's game will determine whether we qualify or not qualify for the playoffs.