Whereas MS Dhoni might have left his captaincy days behind him, Kolkata Knight Riders all-rounder Venkatesh Iyer described an incident of the Chennai Tremendous Kings talisman’s management acumen from his final season because the franchise’s skipper in 2023.
The 30-year-old Iyer, who reunited with KKR through the IPL 2025 mega public sale final November with a hefty price ticket of Rs 23.75 crore, recounted Dhoni’s second of “actual captaincy” that left him gobsmacked throughout a CSK-KKR tie in Chennai.
After Dhoni made a delicate adjustment within the subject throughout KKR’s modest 145-run chase on the MA Chidambaram Stadium, the previous India captain prevailed in organising Iyer’s wicket off the very subsequent ball, with Ravindra Jadeja holding onto a catch close to the short-third place off Deepak Chahar’s bowling.
“Dhoni took out a fielder from deep sq. leg and positioned him at brief third, barely away from the spot the place brief third often is. The [very] subsequent ball, I hit straight into brief third’s palms,” Iyer instructed in an interview with The Cricket Month-to-month.
Intrigued by Dhoni’s techniques, Iyer approached him to grasp his ideas following KKR’s six-wicket victory. “Submit the sport I requested Dhoni why he positioned that fielder in that spot and he had a correct reply for it. He was attempting to grasp the impression of the ball from my bat, the angles. His studying of angles is simply out of the world, and he knew that if I hit this shot, it needed to go in that course, so he had a fielder put there. That is being proactive. That is actual captaincy: understanding what a batter is doing.
“That was the crafty of Dhoni. I might have waited for a few balls, however no, the subsequent ball, I hit it there (chuckles) and it simply occurred. The cameras confirmed the precise image of how the sector modified and the very subsequent ball I hit there. It’s as much as the batsman to grasp why sure issues are being achieved [on the field],” Iyer remarked.
Dhoni ultimately led CSK to their fifth IPL title that season, beating Gujarat Titans within the closing, earlier than relinquishing the management function for Ruturaj Gaikwad within the IPL 2024 season.