While Chennai Super Kings (CSK) are likely to out of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 playoffs race, head coach Stephen Fleming answered a few questions about the team’s performance and where they went wrong. However, he backed skipper Ruturaj Gaikwad despite saying he didn’t play well.
“I’ll start with the powerplay. The key one is wickets, really. Yeah, I think Ruturaj can do more. He’s done more in the past. He’s been a fine player at the top. He hasn’t produced the quantity of runs at the pace of runs (this season) that he’s done in his career. And that’s something that he will address,” he said in the post-match press conference.
“But in conjunction with Urvil Patel, who’s come in, who’s pretty free-spirited, so there is a combination aspect to it. But that is something that we’ll ponder over. I thought today got difficult in terms of the pace of the pitch,” again said the head coach.
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Despite the tricky nature of the pitch, where the ball was gripping and stopping a bit, Fleming said that 180 was more than a competitive score but the Sunrisers Hyderabad chased it down easily and they deserve credit for the way they batted as well.
“So, getting through to a score of 180 was more than competitive. The spin bowling aspect, I don’t know. I haven’t spent a lot of time evaluating that one. It wasn’t a lot of turn. It was slow today. There wasn’t a huge amount of turn,” he added.
“But the use of Akeal Hosein, and we’ve got Veer there as well, and Noor. Yeah, those are things that we will go over, and we do review them when we’re looking at it. Today, probably if you look at their attack, it was their seam bowlers that bowled cutters into the wicket hard that did the damage. So, our attack was a little bit different to that,” he again said.
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“Yeah, there’s been a lot of change. So, this year, at least, he was here the whole time (due to an injury). Last year, he wasn’t here at all. So, that would be unfair to judge that. But, yeah, there’s been a lot of work done behind the scenes as we learn about this group of players. Obviously, the way through, we’ve made some mistakes. Always put our hand up for that. But we’ve also done some good things. There’s been some players who have come through. We’ve, sort of, the second half, we’ve won a number of games and we’ve been in the fight with this. We just haven’t been accurate enough,” he further added.
“It’s a big transition from having one of the best captains that cricket’s seen running the franchise for such a long time to a new captain. So, it’s going to take a little bit of time. And, look, he’s doing a good job. He has a massive amount of respect with this group of players. And he’s learning all the time and putting that into play. So, going forward, I have no doubt he’ll be a fine captain for this franchise,” Stephen Fleming concluded.
