Last Updated on 9 months ago by Charbel Coorey

Gautam Gambhir never misses a chance to take a dig on MS Dhoni and yet again after Chennai Super Kings lost the match against Rajasthan Royals, the retired cricketer was ready with his views about Dhoni batting at no. 7.

“I was a bit surprised to be honest,” Gambhir said. “MS Dhoni batting at No. 7? And sending Ruturaj Gaikwad before him, Sam Curran before him. Makes no sense to me. In fact, you should be leading from the front. And this is not what you call leading from the front. Batting at No. 7 when you’re chasing what 2017? The game was over. Faf was probably the lone warrior”.

Though CSK missed the winning score by 16 runs, the chase was full of fireworks. While Watson opened the match with his promising innings delivering four sixes in his innings of 33 off 21 balls, Sam Curran hammered a couple of sixes in his innings of 17 runs. Later on, it was Faf du Plessis who stole the show and became CSK’s highest scorer for the night with 72 off 37 balls, with seven sixes in his innings. And in the last over, though the team had already lost, Dhoni smashed three sixes in a row giving their fans a delightful end.

However, for the Indian politician and former cricketer, it was for “personal runs”. “Yes, you can talk about MS Dhoni’s last over, but it was of no use to be honest. It was just all personal runs”, said Gambhir.

Even in the winning cause against Mumbai Indians, Dhoni had come in at No. 7 and the reasoning was convincing enough from a Captain’s point of view. The 39-year-old skipper-Captain has already taken retirement from all forms of international cricket and has plans of trying out new combinations for the team. In the post-match presentation, when he was asked about his decision of coming after six down, he said that his lack of time in the middle – his match against Mumbai was his first competitive game in 437 days after India’s World Cup semi-final defeat to New Zealand in 2019 – was the primary reason he was coming lower down the order.

“Oh I haven’t batted for a very long time, you know and the 14-day quarantine doesn’t really help,” he told Star, the host broadcaster, about his batting position. “I’m slowly trying to get into the tournament. Also at the same time, we want to try a few different things like Sam Curran or Ravindra Jadeja, sending them up. It’s something we haven’t done for a very long time and this gives us an opportunity to do that, at the start of the tournament. And as the tournament progresses you’ll see the senior players stepping in and taking that responsibility, but otherwise, we have been one team that has kept doing the same thing. I feel we have an opportunity over here where we can try a few different things if it works. If it doesn’t work, we can always go back to what our strengths are.”

It’s well known fact that Gambhir has been critical about Dhoni’s performance over the last few years he even called Sanju Samson a better wicket keeper than Dhoni. “See, if someone else would have done this, some other [batsman] captain had batted No. 7, he would have got a lot of flak. It is MS Dhoni – probably why people don’t talk about it,” Gambhir said. “When you don’t have Suresh Raina, you’re making people believe that Sam Curran is better than you. You’re making people believe that Ruturaj Gaikwad, Curran, Kedar Jadhav, Faf du Plessis, M Vijay, all these guys, are better than you. There is nothing wrong if you end up getting out early, at least start leading from the front, trying to inspire the team as well”, he added.

The former Indian Captain’s game plan is not worth questioning as he has won several matches for the country just by standing behind the stumps. Similarly, the IPL franchise has total belief with their captain just like CSK coach Stephen Fleming who felt Dhoni coming in at 14th over was pretty much optimum time to seal the game.

“MS is a specialist towards the end of the innings, always has been. Curran was there trying to hit and keep us in the game at that point when we were falling behind. He’s got good hitting power like we saw. Rituraj it was his first game and we wanted to get him into the game into the order. We wanted to be aggressive, we’ve got a long batting order and we’re just trying to use our resources smartly. We have this question every year. He was in in the 14th over, which is pretty much optimal time, and sort of batted accordingly. He is coming back from not playing a huge amount of cricket, so the expectations – to see him at his best – is gonna take some time. But you see him towards the end, he was very good. Faf du Plessis carried the form, so we weren’t too far away. It wasn’t the batting that was the worry to be honest”, he said.

Written by Anjali Jha. Follow Anjali on Twitter today.