Former India captain MS Dhoni has an immense reputation of backing his players and developing young talent. However, he was under major scrutiny during IPL 2020 as Chennai Super Kings faltered during the league stage and were unable to secure qualification for the first time in their history.
Having won just six of the 12 matches, Dhoni’s side finished second from bottom and the captain of the Yellow Army attracted a lot of criticism for his questionable team selection and for not giving youngsters enough chances in the team XI.
To this question, Dhoni controversially replied, “It’s fair enough [the criticism for not playing youngsters], this season we weren’t there. Maybe we didn’t see as much spark from some of our youngsters. Maybe going forward we bring them in and they play without pressure.”
The 39-year-old attracted a lot of flak for his comments and people accused Dhoni of throwing the youngsters under the bus. However, almost a year later, and CSK’s N Jagadeesan came out in support of Dhoni and clarified his thoughts on the matter exactly.
“What Dhoni actually said was completely misunderstood by the press. It was not about the youngsters, Ruturaj Gaikwad and I did well to be honest. What people don’t get is that he’s someone who’s trying to boost the entire team, the seniors as well,” Jagadeesan told Sportskeeda.
Jagadeesan also revealed that the team did well following Dhoni’s comments and used it as an extra source of motivation.
“When you have such legends in the team, you can’t pinpoint each of them. There needs to be a way where the seniors are backed up. For them to be backed up, something had to be done. And after his comment, we did well and the team did really well,” he said.
He also added that at CSK, the youngsters worked more on the mental aspect of the game and tried to learn from the seniors in the squad instead of relying on technical drills and expertise.
“The way I go about my game, preparing mentally. We don’t really work a lot on the technical aspect at CSK because we don’t have a lot of time. But learning comes from looking at the others and how they prepare mentally for a game,” Jagadeesan signed off.
