On Tuesday, Chennai Super Kings will play host to Gujarat Titans in front of a home crowd that is eager to see M.S. Dhoni win another Indian Premier League title. This week might be Dhoni’s last week playing cricket professionally.
At the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, which is likely to be completely sold out, everyone will be looking at the 41-year-old Dhoni.
Four-time champions In the first play-off of the Indian Premier League for this season, table-toppers Gujarat will travel to play at Chennai. The victor of this match will advance to Sunday’s championship. The loser will play in the next round of the playoffs.
Dhoni, the current captain of Chennai and a former captain of India, is set to call it quits at the conclusion of this cricket season, thus fans have flocked in big numbers to every venue to see him play one more time.
In 2020, he fulfilled his obligation to withdraw from national duty. Fans are left in the dark about Dhoni’s plans since he has not made it clear that he intends to hang up his cleats when the current season comes to a close at some point in the next week.
This season, the wicketkeeper who can also bat has remade himself as a lower-order batsman who comes in at number eight in the batting order.
“This is what my job is,” he remarked after scoring a nine-ball 20 during a late cameo to assist Chennai in beating Delhi earlier this month. “This is what my job is.”
“I have told them (his team) this is what I am supposed to do, don’t make me run a lot, and it has been working,” the player said. “It has been working.”
The probable end of Dhoni’s cricketing career is one of the subplots that will play out over the last week of the Twenty20 spectacular.
Competitors from Gujarat have continued their miraculous run, having won the championship in their first season ever and now qualifying for the playoffs for a second consecutive year.
“Last year we did well, everything went our way,” said Gujarat’s captain Hardik Pandya, who later led the club to the top of the 10-team table in the regular season this year, guiding Gujarat to victory.
This year presented a new difficulty for us to overcome. We were anticipating opposition from other individuals. The lads had a remarkable amount of character.
The team’s opener, Shubman Gill, has scored 680 runs, which places him in second place in the IPL behind only Faf du Plessis of Bangalore, who has 730 runs, but Shubman Gill has a chance to win the Orange Cap for leading scorer.
On Sunday, he hit his second century in a row to play yet another decisive part for a squad that won their match and improved their record to 10 wins out of 14 in the group stage.
In the event that Gujarat advances to the championship game, they will have the opportunity to defend their title in the stadium in Ahmedabad, which has a capacity of 132,000.
In the next playoff, the five-time champion Mumbai Indians will face off against the Lucknow Super Giants on Wednesday. India’s current captain, Rohit Sharma, will lead the team.
The winner of this match will play the loser of the match between Chennai and Gujarat on Friday for a chance to play in the final on Sunday at the largest cricket stadium in the globe.
Cameron Green, an Australian all-rounder, scored his first T20 century during Mumbai’s thumping victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad on Sunday. This victory allowed Mumbai to squeak into the playoffs.
Green’s 47-ball 100 not out and Rohit’s 56 in Mumbai’s successful chase of 201 have all of a sudden made the IPL heavyweights favorites in the knockout match against Lucknow. The last time Mumbai won the IPL was in 2020.
When Mumbai paid $2.11 million for Green at this season’s auction, he became the second-most expensive player in the history of the Indian Premier League. Green is currently 23 years old.