IPL Final: Chennai Super Kings and Dhoni found wanting for the lack of Plan B

Eight playoffs in eight seasons, six final appearances, two championships won. There is no questioning Chennai Super Kings’ consistency in the Indian Premier League or the role played by their captain MS Dhoni. They have prided themselves on being a close-knit group, revolving around a core group of players that they have kept together season after season.

Halfway through 2015 however, one started getting the feeling that the craving for consistency gave way to tactical rigidity in the Super Kings camp. We can argue all we can how about the outcome at Eden Gardens would have been different if Dhoni had won the toss and chose to bat.

But Chennai lost this final to Mumbai Indians – by a huge margin of 41 runs – and it’s because they made it to the final without ever testing a ‘Plan B’. They couldn’t recover from Mumbai’s onslaught because the team - on the night and in the latter half of this season - lacked firepower in batting.

When Dhoni decided to bowl first on a Kolkata pitch that looked like a good batting wicket, he was heavily banking on his bowlers to come good. He wanted to restrict Mumbai to a reasonable total, so that his out-of-form batting lineup did not have to chase much. It was, after all, his bowlers who dragged his team through, first to the playoffs and then to the final. So Dhoni trusted them to deliver one last time.

But just like it happened at Wankhede a few days ago in the first qualifier, Mumbai went after the bowlers – especially the spinners. Rohit Sharma, Lendl Simmons and Kieron Pollard knew that once Dhoni’s main weapons are hit out of the attack, he would have to try something new to pull them back. They decimated the Chennai spinners on a track which we later found out was not that easy to bat on, as R Ashwin, P Negi and Ravindra Jadeja were allowed to bowl only six overs that went for 65 runs.

With Nehra not getting his usual early wickets, Dhoni had to turn to Dwayne Smith of all people to try and apply the brakes on the Mumbai batting. It worked, briefly, as he got rid of Lendl Simmons. But in Pollard, Mumbai has a batsman who feasts on these middling-bowlers who are neither pacy enough to bounce him out nor tricky enough to outwit him.

Mumbai piled up 202 runs at the end of overs and there was the sense that the game was already out of Chennai’s reach.

True to form, Chennai’s batsmen were never in the chase at all. Dwayne Smith fought, but the damage was done when the top-order managed only 35 runs in the first six overs. Michael Hussey failed, Suresh Raina failed, Dhoni failed, and Faf du Plessis failed.

Eventually, CSK failed to go past the final hurdle for the fourth time in their six final appearances.

It’s an age old cricketing adage that you do not mess with the winning combination. When your ‘Plan A’ is working so well, there is often no need to tinker with things like Stephen Fleming and Dhoni kept repeating when asked about rotating their squad earlier this season.

But the problem this season was that the default Plan A was only barely ever working. Brendon McCullum’s form at the top of the order acted as a band-aid to a wound that cut a little deeper than the CSK think-tank dared to acknowledge. With McCullum gone, none of their other match-winners could step it up. They could not even look at the bench for a player with an X-Factor to shake things up.

Raina had his worst IPL so far and his customary big-knock in a big-match in the yellow jersey never arrived. Dhoni too had a forgettable season with the bat, often slowing down proceedings trying to get his eye in. “I went in and ate up too many deliveries,” Dhoni had said after the first loss of the season to Rajasthan Royals. The middle-order, simply put, was stuttering.

The Chennai Super Kings were ultimately found wanting because when the going got tough, they did not find a way to wriggle themselves out of it.

All great thinkers and leaders of modern sports have the knack to shake things up when they hit a rut – like Sir Alex Ferguson repeatedly did with his Manchester United sides. Chennai fans would be hoping for the same next season. Consistency, if it means constantly finishing second best, can become a dangerous habit.