Stats: MS Dhoni's glorious reign as Chennai Super Kings captain explained in numbers

A golden era in the Indian Premier League (IPL) officially came to an end on Thursday with MS Dhoni stepping down as Chennai Super Kings captain and handing the reins of the defending champions to Ruturaj Gaikwad, who also happens to be a wicketkeeper-batter and whose leadership skills are said to be inspired from ‘Captain Cool’ himself.

Dhoni had briefly stepped down as CSK captain just two days before the start of the 2022 edition, with the franchise naming all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja as their new skipper . ‘Jaddu’ however, would hand the captaincy back to Dhoni halfway into the 15th season after Chennai lost six out of their first eight matches, beginning their title defence with four consecutive defeats, and eventually finished ninth in the 10-team competition.

This time, however, there appears to be an air of finality in Dhoni’s decision to move away from leadership. And if it that indeed turns out to be true, and the franchise is able to avoid a repeat of the 2022 fiasco, then this year’s edition will be the first in the history of the Indian Premier League in which none of Dhoni, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are the captain of a franchise.

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Rohit’s decade-long reign as Mumbai Indians skipper came to an end in November after the five-time champions announced all-rounder Hardik Pandya, who joined in a blockbuster trade from Gujarat Titans, as their new skipper. Kohli, on the other hand, had stepped down as Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) skipper at the end of the 2021 season, and would quit captaincy at the international level soon after.

Until Thursday, Dhoni had been the only remaining captain from the inaugural edition of the cash-rich league still leading the same team 16 years later. MSD had been leading the Super Kings from a time when the T20 format was still in its infancy and Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid were leading the Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore franchises.

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With the Dhoni era coming to an end on Thursday, we take a look at some of his statistics as CSK captain over the years:

— Dhoni captained in a total of 226 matches since the inaugural edition in 2008 — leading CSK in 212 of those and the now-defunct Rising Pune Supergiant in 14 matches in 2016. MSD currently the only captain in IPL history with 200 or more appearances as captain, whether taking into account a single franchise or multiple.

— Dhoni is also the most successful captain in the history of the IPL with 133 wins — 128 as CSK captain and five while leading RPS. He currently is the only skipper with 100 or more wins as captain, both for a single franchise as well as overall.

— Dhoni also has the highest winning percentage (59.37 per cent) among players who have played a minimum of 50 matches as captain with Sachin Tendulkar and Rohit Sharma sitting at the second and third spots respectively with winning percentages of 58.82 and 56.32 respectively. MSD sits at the third spot when further expanding the list to captains with a minimum of 10 games, with Hardik Pandya (70.96) and Steve Smith (59.52) occupying the top two spots.

— Dhoni is also currently the only player with 250 or more appearances in Indian Premier League. He had achieved the milestone in last year’s final against Gujarat Titans in Ahmedabad, and is among only a handful of players to have scored 5,000 or more runs in the league.

—At the time of Dhoni’s decision to step down as captain, CSK are the most successful side in terms of winning percentage (58.96) among teams who have played more than two seasons. They also happen to be the second-most successful team behind arch-rivals Mumbai Indians in terms of victories, with MI having won 138 matches compared to CSK’s 131.

— The impact that Dhoni has had on CSK’s fortunes as leader can be gauged from the fact that the ‘Yellow Army’ have won just 3 out of 13 matches when not led by ‘Captain Cool’.