Follow UsChennai Super Kings (CSK), one of the most successful franchises in IPL history with five titles, find themselves in unfamiliar territory this season. After five matches in IPL 2025, they have just one win, languishing at 9th place with a net run rate (NRR) of -0.889.
Their home defeat versus RCB earlier this season, also their biggest ever at Chepauk, prompted head coach Stephen Fleming to admit: "There is no home advantage at Chepauk. We’ve been honest with you. Over the last couple of years, we haven’t been able to read the wickets here."
This public acknowledgement by Fleming that the nature of Chepauk pitches have changed might be accurate, but it could also be too little too late.
Ball-tracking data from the past couple of seasons reveals that Chepauk now offers two distinct types of strips, medium bounce and high bounce. Analyzing deliveries pitched between 6 to 6.5 meters, a common Test length for pacers in India targeting the top of off stump, we observe that bounce values at Chepauk have shifted.
Matches showing “height at stumps” values near 0.65 meters can be classified as medium bounce, while those near 0.70 or 0.75 indicate high bounce, especially by Chepauk standards. It’s clear that there are a number of matches played on higher-bounce surfaces, which require batsmen to have good ability to handle pace bowling.
Further, from 2012 to 2021, spinners extracted an average turn of 2.87 degrees at Chepauk. In the 2023 to 2024 seasons, that figure dropped to 2.17 degrees, a stark decline.
CSK’s failure to adapt to this evolution proved costly. At the mega auction, they doubled down on their traditional blueprint, splurging 30% of their budget on three spinners, two of whom are ageing. This left the squad imbalanced, with insufficient funds to address glaring gaps: a fragile middle order and a lack of high quality pace bowlers.
CSK’s issues with the bat are also rooted in squad construction. In 2025, the franchise prioritized several local bowlers who now don't even feature in the starting eleven. They splurged over six crore to re-sign Devon Conway, only to bench him for the in-form Rachin Ravindra. In hindsight, retaining both Conway and Ravindra may have been redundant. One of those funds could have been redirected to acquire a middle-order pace-hitter, which they sorely lack.
Since 2023, CSK’s attacking shot percentage in the Powerplay (PP) has lagged behind the league average of 32%,. While it’s true that CSK traditionally prefer a conservative start in the powerplay, the introduction of the Impact Player rule has shifted the meta. Teams now go hard up front, and CSK are struggling to keep pace.
In 2025, CSK have the lowest attacking shot percentage in the PP at 25.5 percent. While this may partially reflect a lack of intent, it also highlights technical limitations, particularly against pace.
An analysis of performance against swing/seam, deliveries with one degree or more of seam/swing, reveals that apart from Devon Conway, none of CSK’s top-order batters preserve their wicket well under such conditions.
In the powerplay, 70 percent of deliveries are pitched between 6 to 10 meters, known as “into the pitch” bowling. Against this length, only Ravindra and Shivam Dube score at a strike rate in the 80th percentile or higher. But Dube’s role as a middle-overs enforcer means he rarely faces the new ball. His lack of range against new ball pace bowling also makes him a risky option up top.
Sam Curran, an overseas all-rounder who isn’t even a regular in the XI and definitely not a top-order batter, is somehow one of their few players performing above the league median against balls in the 6–10m length range, both in terms of run-scoring and wicket preservation. The fact that he stands out, while none of their domestic top-order batters dominate this zone, says a lot about how poorly the squad was built at the auction.
As a result, CSK have the lowest strike rate of 112 in the league this season against “into the pitch” deliveries across all phases.
CSK's late-innings struggles can be explained by similar trends. Their best performer against “into the pitch” pace bowling from lower order remains 43-year-old MS Dhoni. Moreover, several of their lower-middle-order batters — Dhoni, Jadeja, Curran, Ashwin, Shankar — struggle against both spin and slower balls.
In the slog overs, the ability to counter slower-ball variations and exploit pace-off deliveries is crucial. And in CSK’s camp, only Dube stands out in this department. The rest fall well below median strike rates, making them easy targets for opposition bowlers who load up on spin and pace variations in the final overs.
This clustering of similar skill sets in the lower order gives bowling units a clear blueprint to choke CSK's scoring rate from the 12th over onward.
CSK’s overinvestment in spin bowlers, driven by a management strategy fixated on maximizing home advantage and compounded by poor auction planning, has severely impacted their powerplay bowling. This season, their bowlers have conceded nearly 10.5 runs per over (RPO) and averaged close to 40, and are among the worst in both categories.
The squad assembled at the auction includes three bowlers (Noor Ahmad, Pathirana, and Jadeja) who specialize outside the PP, leaving captain Ruturaj Gaikwad reliant on Khaleel Ahmed’s 3 overs and Ashwin’s new-ball spin.
However, Ashwin, the sole spinner comfortable with the new ball, has struggled, leaking 15.6 RPO while taking just one wicket. This lack of bowling flexibility has forced Gaikwad to underutilize spinners like Jadeja, who has bowled only 13 overs this season, as the team struggles to exhaust spinner quotas effectively during matches.
For CSK to revive their season and secure a playoff berth, two urgent adjustments are critical:
1. Top-order consistency and intent: Batters must not only regain form and accumulate runs but also accelerate scoring rates, especially during the powerplay and death overs.
2. Recalibrate playing XI: CSK should consider dropping one of their three spinners to accommodate a pace bowler capable of delivering effectively in both the powerplay and middle/slog overs.
While CSK have historically engineered comebacks from challenging positions, clinging to outdated strategies at Chepauk and ignoring modern T20 demands could make 2025 a forgettable campaign for the "Men in Yellow”. They seemed to miss the memo, and they are now paying the price.