South Africa and IPL legend AB de Villiers has made a bold prediction about MS Dhoni’s IPL future while saying that he was happy to see the legendary cricketer’s name on Chennai Super Kings’s retention list ahead of the IPL 2024. MS Dhoni was retained as CSK’s captain for the upcoming season. Notably, CSK released up to eight players, but the core of the team remained intact, including MS Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, and Ruturaj Gaikwad.
However, MS Dhoni played with a niggle in his knee throughout the IPL 2023 season, but he led the Super Kings to another IPL title. The famous wicketkeeper-batter scored 104 runs in 16 matches at a stunning strike rate of 184 while performing the finisher’s job pretty well.
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“I see that man’s name on the retention list, and it just makes me happy. There was a lot of talk about it in the last season about whether it was going to be his last season. He is moving on to 2024 to play another IPL season. With him, he is always full of surprises. Maybe he has got three more to go, who knows? But It is just great to see his name on there,” AB de Villiers said on his YouTube channel. “He (Shahrukh Khan) is a strong player and is pretty consistent. I am very sure some of the teams will be very keen to get him over there. He hits the ball a long way as well. That’s where CSK stand out. They are very good at picking up released players.”
AB de Villiers also opened up on the team’s struggles, commenting on the difficulty of bowling at the Chinnaswamy Stadium due to its challenging boundary dimensions as well.
“It has been a well-known fact that RCB’s bowling has been an area of weakness over the years. Yes, the batters also made a mess at times, but you need to play as a team. You need to gel together and understand each other. More often than not, there has been this feeling of making silly mistakes, not getting the discipline right, and not doing the basics well under pressure. We know how difficult it is to bowl at the Chinnaswamy Stadium,” he said.
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“It is the area where I would be worried. Obviously, there is Mohammed Siraj there, Reece Topley, and some experience there, but if you see the released players list, they let go of Wanindu Hasaranga, Harshal Patel, and Josh Hazlewood. Those three have won them a lot of games in the last couple of seasons, especially Hazlewood; he had just this way of controlling that bowling lineup,” AB de Villiers concluded.
