Picture Credit: Twitter
The 2022 IPL is turning bad to worse for the defending champions Chennai Super Kings as their star bowling-allrounder Deepak Chahar has suffered a back injury while recovering at the NCA. Chahar had suffered a quadricep tear while playing against the West Indies at the start of the year. The 29-year-old was already set to miss a major chunk of the IPL but with a new back injury, he could miss out on the entire tournament.
As reported by InsideSport, the CSK management was unaware of Deepak Chahar’s fresh injury and was quoted saying, “We are not aware of this back injury. He has been working very hard to get back to shape and play again for us. But for now, he remains unavailable.”
The Chennai Super Kings had paid a massive sum of Rs 14 crore for getting Deepak Chahar in the IPL 2022 mega auction in February. The Rajasthan-born has been a crucial part of the CSK set up and his absence has left many holes that have directly resulted in their results. The Yellow Army is at the bottom of the league table with four losses from four straight games.
The four-time Champions also made a crucial change at the start of the season as former India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni decided to step down from the captaincy and promote all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja to the role. But this change hasn’t resulted in any positives and has attracted a lot of criticism.
While Speaking to ESPNCricinfo, Chennai Super Kings CEO Kasi Viswanathan explained how Dhoni had been considering the decision for a while and "he felt it is the right time to hand over (the) captaincy to Jaddu [Jadeja]".
Former Indian player and coach Ravi Shastri had called out the team for this decision. He was quoted saying, "I feel that someone like Jadeja, he should focus on his own game. If Chennai were to think back, they wouldn't have let go of Faf du Plessis."
"If Dhoni was thinking of giving up the captaincy, then Faf should have been given the job, and Jadeja should have continued as [just] a player. He would have played freely, without the pressure of captaincy. Things could have been different for Chennai then," the former India all-rounder said.