The Indian Premier League has been set to begin from March 29 with an opening clash between Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians at the iconic Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. The upcoming edition of IPL will also mark MS Dhoni’s return to competitive cricket after close to 8 months of absence.
MS Dhoni’s exit
The former Indian skipper was last seen in action against New Zealand in the ICC World Cup semifinal, a game India lost. He made himself unavailable for India’s international assignments post the WC exit and was eventually dropped from the BCCI’s list of centrally contracted players in January. The former Indian captain missed all the series after the world cup exit as he involved in the parachute regiment of the Indian Army in Kashmir valley.
As pointed out by BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and India head coach Ravi Shastri, Dhoni’s international future depends on his performances in IPL 2020 which comes in to consider him in T20 World Cup planned later this year in Australia.
Raina and Rayudu have been training here for the past three weeks. MS Dhoni is expect to practise for a couple of weeks with Suresh Raina and Ambati Rayudu among other Chennai Super Kings players.
This IPL plays a crucial role for Dhoni’s return to International matches that too for the upcoming T20I world cup. During the net practice Dhoni aggressively strike 5 sixes of five consecutive balls. This made fans to get in joy as they see their “Thala” in an glorious form.
Corona threat to postpone IPL
On the other side the out break of corona may expect to affect the scheduled IPL. But the IPL Franchise announced that they are okay with the decision to play behind the closed doors. As World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak a “pandemic”, there is no other option than to play the match behind closed doors.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has advised against conducting the 13th edition of the Indian Premier League. And also added it’s upto them(IPL Franchises).
Though there’s a lot of argument regards the IPL matches, teams continuous their practice session without any break. Chennai Super Kings, one of the IPL team which has crazy fans starts their practice session from the beginning of March.
During a practice match at Chepauk, Dhoni shows his aggressive batting format and proves his form. Despite the match neither being televised nor the full scorecard of the same being available, there are reports of Dhoni scoring 123 (91) in the practice match.
Checkout the video that went viral:
