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Both Dhoni and his team performed badly in this year’s IPL.
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Sangakkara has faith that CSK will come back stronger next year.
Chennai Super Kings (CSK) skipper MS Dhoni hasn’t looked in his best of touch in the IPL 2020 thus far as rustiness crept in his batting. Even Dhoni himself conceded that he has struggled to find form due to lack of cricket and practice in the last 12 months.
So far in the IPL 2020, Dhoni has managed to score just 200 runs in 13 matches at a mere average of 25. His IPL career average is 40.99. The veteran wicket-batsman hasn’t scored a single half-century this season.
After seeing Dhoni’s struggle with the bat, the former Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara has come up with advice for the 39-year-old. Sangakkara believes that there’s nothing left for CSK in the IPL 2020 as they are already out of the play-offs race. Thus, Dhoni should focus more on how to bounce back stronger in the next edition of the tournament.
Sangakkara reckoned that MSD should play more and more competitive cricket to regain his form as playing cricket only in the IPL will not help him in any way.
“He will, of course, be disappointed with his personal form but with only one game to go, I don’t think there is any point in trying to salvage that. It’s about winning games. He can address it after he goes and comes back next year,” Sangakkara said on Star Sports.
“But what he has to do is to play some more super-competitive cricket in between. You can’t have long gaps between your IPL seasons, not playing international cricket or not playing regional or first-class cricket. He has got to be super competitive and play competitive cricket to be in form,” he added.
“I am sure he is hungry to keep playing, hungry to perform”: Sangakkara
Further in the interaction, Sangakkara stated that Dhoni is still hungry to play cricket and is a team player. Thus, his main motive will be to make his team win rather than improving his personal batting stats.
“I am sure he is hungry to keep playing, hungry to perform. Knowing MSD, he would much rather take a team win than a half-century for himself. That’s the way he has been built, that’s the way he has always thought. If he can contribute to it in any way, even by scoring 10 runs he’d be happy.”
The Sri Lankan veteran signed off saying that everyone has off days as a player, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t play. Both Dhoni and CSK performed badly this year, and Sanga has faith that they will deal with this maturely and will come back stronger.
“… you will always have a season or series where you’re off the boil, and this is MS’s. It has reflected on the team’s fortunes as well. And it’s something you get to expect. You can over analyse it; you analyse it any which way, it just happens. And it’s happened at the back end of MSD’s career.
“But that doesn’t make him a lesser player or less important for CSK at all. It’s just one of those phases that he has got to deal with and he’s got to come out of it,” Sangakkara concluded.