Chennai Super Kings had a rough start to their IPL 2025 campaign, winning only one out of their five matches so far. On top of that, captain Ruturaj Gaikwad fractured his elbow and is ruled out for the remainder of the season. In his absence, MS Dhoni is back at the helm of things and marked his return as CSK captain against defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders. 

During the toss, Dhoni addressed CSK’s poor start that they have lost too many matches this season and now he expects every cricketer to do the basics right. He added that the five-time champions don’t have sloggers in the team but proper authentic batters and wants each of them to back their instincts.

“It is important now, every game is important. We have lost too many matches and now it is important to do the basics right – have dot balls, take our catches. A couple of games we lost by big margins, but otherwise it was about the small things – about one over going for 20 runs. Our batters are more authentic as batters, they won’t slog everything. They just need to back their instincts. It is important to start well, get boundaries early on and try to get a couple of early wickets as well,” Dhoni said after the toss.

Notably, Chennai made two changes to their playing XI against KKR. Gaikwad has been replaced by the returning Rahul Tripathi while Mukesh Choudhary has been dropped for Anshul Kamboj.

Teams:

Kolkata Knight Riders (Playing XI): Quinton de Kock (w), Sunil Narine, Ajinkya Rahane (c), Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Moeen Ali, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Varun Chakaravarthy

Chennai Super Kings (Playing XI): Rachin Ravindra, Devon Conway, Rahul Tripathi, Vijay Shankar, Shivam Dube, MS Dhoni (wk/c), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Noor Ahmad, Anshul Kamboj, Khaleel Ahmed