MS Dhoni in practice for Chennai Super Kings© Twitter
Chennai Super Kings skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s left knee injury has raised doubts over his participation in the IPL opener against Gujarat Titans here on Friday, but the team CEO ruled out such a possibility. The 41-year-old former India skipper has apparently sustained a niggle on his left knee during a training session in Chennai and didn’t bat at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Motera during CSK’s nets on Thursday. When CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan was asked, he told PTI, “As far as I am concerned, the skipper is 100 percent playing. I don’t know about any other development.” In case Dhoni doesn’t play, CSK then might ask one among Devon Conway or Ambati Rayudu to keep wickets, as they don’t have any specialised stumper in their ranks.
Dhoni does a lot of pre-season training, but in order to conserve energy, he normally doesn’t train a lot when the tournament starts.
At his age, it doesn’t take much time for any niggle to aggravate and become more serious, taking more time than usual to heal.
With so much of travelling and back-to-back matches, there remains a possibility that Dhoni wouldn’t like to risk playing and missing more matches in the latter stages of the tournament.
However, the Jharkhand dasher is not known to miss matches and has managed to play through a lot of niggles, including back problems.
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