Chennai’s Sinking Kings? Nay, it’s a forced transition that happened midway last season. A team management that has hold on to ‘experience’ above the rest over the years suddenly in 2025, realised that its old war horses are ageing and that someday the think tank will have to look for reinforcements – look beyond the principle that only the ‘tried and tested ones’ will be bought in auctions before drafting their skill-set into play.
For a team that used to qualify for play-offs for fun – 12 off the 16 times they have featured in IPL. The record speaks volumes for the dominance, consistency, the winning culture the ‘Yellow Army’ imbibed under MS Dhoni.
The Golden Era Of Chennai Super Kings
The journey from Consistent Super Kings to Chennai’s Sinking Kings is only a recent phenomenon. Dhoni’s men made it to the knock-outs on every single edition between 2008 and 2019 (barring 2016 and 2017 when the franchise was suspended). Such was the consistency that a popular saying did the rounds, ‘IPL is that tournament where seven teams (until 2021 excluding 2011) compete amongst themselves to play Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the final. Interestingly, the Yellow Army has played 10 finals in the league’s history, winning five and losing five. They are followed by arch-rivals Mumbai Indians (MI) who have won five of the six finals they have featured in.
What has led to Chennai’s decline in IPL?
Several factors are responsible for the present situation CSK finds itself today. Following the 2023 championship, when they equalled MI’s record for winning the title five times; CSK failed to qualify for the play-offs for two times in a row for the very first time! Within this period, an ageing Dhoni at the helm tried passing the captaincy baton to able lieutenant Ravindra Jadeja but that didn’t pay off until during the beginning of the 2024 season when the then 27-year-old Ruturaj Gaikwad was made the full-time captain. This was the beginning of transition.
Since Ruturaj’s tenure began, it has been a bumpy ride for the young captain, who despite Dhoni’s guidance have so far failed to deliver an ‘impact’ as a captain. The only light in the end of the tunnel in a stuttering season in 2025 was seen midway when the think tank broke all the shackles to infuse young blood into the squad and playing-XI with the likes of Ayush Mhatre (18), Dewald Brevis (22), Urvil Patel (27), Noor Ahmed (21) and Anshul Kamboj (25).
This worked wonders as the youngsters delivered instilling faith on the management that with the evolving T20 cricket, the CSK management needs to mix youngsters with experience as they can switch gears from ball one and during clutch situation under the guidance of the experienced lot.
During the mini-auction ahead of IPL 2026, the management roped in youngsters Prashant Veer (20) and Kartik Sharma (19), splurging record Rs 14.2 crore on both. They also bought New Zealand’s bowling all-rounder Zak Foulkes (23) and Tamil Nadu’s Gurjapneet Singh (27).
Having spent heavily on youth of late, coach Stephen Fleming and legend MS Dhoni’s tactics will be simple – giving the young guns sufficient time to grow and express themselves and most importantly ‘believing in the process’.
Will Dhoni’s faith in youth repay?
IPL 2026 started on a forgettable note for the Men from Chennai as a batting collapse followed by a Vaibhav Sooryavanshi storm blew them away. The challenge this season will be the right blend of youth and experience, the right combination according to weather conditions and pitch on offer.
For sure, the transition for CSK has began – though not on a smooth note as the think tank banked a bit too much on experience as it delivered until 2023. Gaikwad and Fleming need to sit together on resource utilisation as the squad bench strength is promising enough to challenge the pre-tournament favourites and boasts all the pre-requisites to qualify for the playoffs.