Former Indian skipper, Kapil Dev has opined that the struggles of MS Dhoni will continue if he only considers playing in the Indian Premier League (IPL). The Chennai Super Kings (CSK) skipper on Sunday confirmed that he will be playing the next edition of the tournament as well when he was asked by Danny Morrison if their game against Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) was his final one for the yellow jersey.

Dhoni had announced his international retirement on August 15 this year, exactly 13 months after he played his final match for the Indian team at the 2019 ICC World Cup. He did not play any form of competitive cricket ahead of the IPL 2020 in the UAE and witnessed a bad phase with the bat as a result, due to the lack of cricket as he had only managed to score 200 runs from 14 matches at an average of 25 and it had happened for the first time in IPL history when he failed to score a fifty. 

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The reason behind Dhoni’s poor form was the lack of cricket as pointed out by Kapil Dev, who also suggested the 3-time IPL-winning skipper to play first-class cricket before turning up for the IPL.

As per the quotes in ABP News, Kapil said, “If Dhoni decides on playing only IPL every year, then it’s impossible for him to perform. It’s not a good thing to talk about age but at his age (39 years), the more he plays, the more his body will be tuned. If you don’t play any cricket for 10 months a year and suddenly play IPL, you can see what happened. You can always have a season up or down if you have played so much cricket. It has happened to someone like Chris Gayle also.”

Dhoni’s batting form also had adverse effects on his team’s fortunes as CSK crashed out of the IPL in the league stage for the first time in history this season.

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Kapil had also added, “He should go back to first-class cricket (domestic List A and T20) and play there. “If someone has achieved so much, the dip in form does affect and it becomes a challenge. Let’s see how he comes out of it.”