Zero Dhoni innings and a 89-run mauling: how CSK's IPL 2026 came apart
Chennai Super Kings' IPL 2026 ended in Ahmedabad on Thursday, bowled out for 140 in 13.4 overs as Gujarat Titans cantered to an 89-run win that locked GT into the top two and finished CSK off mathematically. Six wins in 14 games, 12 points, a seventh-placed finish and an MS Dhoni who never once walked out to bat. For a franchise that built its identity on continuity and late-overs theatre, this season was about the absence of both.
A season Dhoni never appeared in
Dhoni missed the opening fortnight with a calf strain, was talked about for weeks as a return option, then suffered a thumb issue that quietly turned the rehab into a season-long sit-out. By the time the home leg ended at Chepauk against SRH, the 44-year-old was reduced to a lap of honour rather than a comeback innings. He flew back to Ranchi before the Ahmedabad fixture. Whether this was retirement by stealth or simply a body that wouldn't co-operate, the league's most marketable player did not appear in a single game.
For Ruturaj Gaikwad, back as captain after an injury-shortened 2025 in which he handed the role back to Dhoni, that absence shaped everything. Stephen Fleming's coaching staff spent the auction window building a side around the assumption that Dhoni could still finish innings. Once that variable came out, the lower middle order had no anchor, and CSK lost the kind of close games they used to win.
The auction that didn't pay off
Look back at the auction table and the story tightens. CSK traded Ravindra Jadeja and Sam Curran to Rajasthan Royals in exchange for Sanju Samson, released Matheesha Pathirana, Devon Conway and Rachin Ravindra, and went into the season with a 43.4 crore purse and nine slots to fill. Some of those releases were forced by the trade math, but the net result was a thinner squad in two areas they had always carried depth in: finishing batting and death bowling.
The flagship pick at the auction was Prashant Veer, the 20-year-old UP all-rounder who jointly became the most expensive uncapped Indian player in IPL history at ₹14.2 crore, a record shared with fellow CSK signing Kartik Sharma from the same auction. Samson was supposed to plug the wicketkeeping question Dhoni's absence opened up. Both calls were defensible on paper. Neither produced the multi-match hauls a team chasing playoffs needs from its headline buys. Jadeja, meanwhile, returned to the franchise where he started his IPL career and walked into a Rajasthan side that was pushing for a top-four finish, exactly where CSK could not climb above seventh.
The shape of the collapse
CSK lost their first three matches, then won six of the next nine to put themselves back into the conversation. From late April onward they could not back up a win with another. The Chepauk loss to SRH was the symbolic one, sealing the visitor's playoff spot in front of a yellow-shirted crowd that came to see Dhoni and watched him sit in the dugout. The Ahmedabad night was the mathematical one. Sai Sudharsan and Shubman Gill put on 125 for the first wicket, Jos Buttler added an unbeaten 57 off 27, and GT's 229 for four set a target CSK never threatened. They were bowled out inside 14 overs.
What now
Gaikwad will keep the armband. Fleming's contract still has another cycle on it. The deeper question is whether Dhoni plays one more season or whether the lap of honour at Chepauk was the actual goodbye. The franchise has not announced anything either way, and any announcement is unlikely before the auction window opens. What's certain is that the side that takes the field in IPL 2027 will not look like this one. A season with six wins, no captain-icon innings and a 12-point seventh place buys nobody time.
Related Tags:
Cricket Updates
