Netanyahu is facing an election while also is standing against a trial in Israel. The ridiculous claims from the incident only stand to favour one single man.
It reflects on Ruturaj Gaikwad's failures inability to bat on a flat track dominated tournament & anchoring by default always style means that if he doesn't accelerate at an extraordinary rate and when the bowling unit has an off day (almost always), the team struggles to cross the finish line. When he bats through the innings to score a century on a high scoring or flat surface, it often means the rest of the batting lineup failed to get going or lacked the explosive support needed to maximize the total. In both of his IPL centuries, his individual batting pushed CSK to a decent total, but opposition batters like Yashasvi Jaiswal and Marcus Stoinis exploited poor pitch conditions, exposing Rutu's limitations in anchoring style batting. This IMO is also one of the reasons why CSK has been struggling off late to chase scores over 180. We only did in the recent tournament thanks to Sanju and Urvil's explosive batting. The time when CSK's batting has been heavily criticised for the lack of intent, poor ability to chase matches perfectly with Rutu's slump in batting form.
Here's how I felt on seeing CSK's performance at the of each season
2023 - Awesome, we won. Not the most dominant of all victories but we'll take it and we'll come back stronger without gaps in the team to defend the trophy better
2024 - We lost a chance at the playoffs because of Rutu's selfishness for batting at #3, hope CSK fixes it next season and we'll win against everyone
2025 - Rutu is gone and there's a lot of injuries but the B team is just rock solid we just defeated the team on the top of the points table by over 80 runs, we'll be so back next season, with Rutu in place of Sheikh Rashid, the team would be even stronger
2026 - WTF is wrong with this team? This team is irredeemable. The team has one step on the playoffs race and just completely fell apart.
I can see this pattern of CSK being mediocre and worse but not getting over the line. I don't see a ETA for transition. The transition can only complete when we have a world class proven captain leading the team. The team feels like one of those random teams that gets formed during a school cricket league. There's zero role clarity, zero cohesion, zero conviction on field. It's just a pain to watch. 2027 will be the final season that CSK fans would ever watch if this thing never changes and we're in an infinite transition. At this point just sell everyone at the next mega auction, go with a proper planning and get a proper team. Atleast be transparent about it. It's just frustrating to see CSK like this. It feels like CSK is being managed by that like ahh manager from Shaolin Soccer movie, only difference being that guy managed to assemble a good team with his low budget but we can't.
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.