Chennai Super Kings- On a Quest for Glory

India has a long-standing love affair with a game called cricket, a quintessentially British sport played as “creckett” in the sixteenth century, and popularized by the British Empire in the subcontinent since early 1800s. Today, three in every ten TV commercials will carry a cricketing theme or endorsed by India’s cricket heroes. In the new millennium, cricket went through an overhaul – truncated to twenty overs a side and a result could be gotten in three hours – about as long as a baseball game – right for an evening’s Hulk Hogan-style entertainment. Playing the role of a patriarch, the Board of Cricket Control in India, muscled its power to trample Indian Cricket League (ICL) calling it unlicensed and banning many international players, and borrowed many ideas from the first T20 World Championship hosted by South Africa to form its own glitzy version, the Indian Premier League (IPL). 

The IPL is the most-attended cricket league in the world and in 2014 was ranked sixth by average attendance among all sports leagues. In 2010, the IPL became the first sporting event in the world to be broadcast live on YouTube. The Indian Premier League (IPL) was founded by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 2007. It is usually held between March and May of every year and has an exclusive window in the ICC Future Tours Program.

The Chennai Super Kings (CSK) are a franchise cricket team based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. They play in the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Chennai Super Kings  is owned by Chennai Super Kings Cricket Ltd and India Cements is the major stakeholder and is "The most intimate team to its fans, the cricket brand of the common man, CSK, triumphs the kitsch of Bollywood and the purse strings of India’s rich to be the most valuable IPL cricket team." While every IPL team is adorned in a variant of blue- or red-colored jersey with gaudy silver or gold streaks, the CSK cricketers refresh the eyes in bright yellow. A roaring lion is used as a visual symbol, and Chepauk, the home of CSK, is referred colloquially as the lion’s den.

Organizational Attributes:

Barring CSK, all IPL teams hired local players to only fire them in player auctions in American corporate style; for instance, there is no sense of “Bengaluru” in Royal Challengers; even their all-conquering son, Rahul Dravid, was imperturbably relinquished to play for the namesake, the other Royals. A cricket player performs three roles in the IPL: functions as a member in the squad, if selected plays for the team, promotes the brand, and endorses as the primary spokesperson. If team owners rule with an iron rod and let their players go off in a merry-go-round, the fans tend to switch their loyalty, resulting in fan alienation that the clubs may have avoided in the first place. Brand confusion is very evident with Deccan Chargers’ fans: they cheer for Adam Gilchrist who plays now for Kings XI and their club travels as vagrants from Vizag to Cuttack.

CSK did not do different things; it only did things differently. CSK kept the same team rooster for the most part in the five years IPL has been in full-swing. The traditional value of developing the best local talent was continued as the bulk of the side, including Murali Vijay, Ravichandran Ashwin, Srikanth Anirudha, and Subramaniam Badrinath, and Yo Mahesh moved up through Tamil Nadu cricket. The highest wicket-taker in the world, Muttiah Muralitharan, a Tamil, was only forced to let go after a competing IPL team outbid CSK.

It is the only franchise that invested $5 million to revamp on its creaking infrastructure and increase seating capacity to 50,000; today Chepauk boasts of quad conical geometric form roof and bright yellow-colored stands. There definitely is a sense of belonging and empathy with which CSK has been branded.

ALL About CSK'S IPL TITLE

The Super Kings have won the IPL title four times (in 2010, 2011, 2018, and 2021), and have the highest win percentage of matches among all teams in the IPL (59.83%). They hold the records of most appearances in the playoffs (eleven) and the Final (nine) of the IPL. In addition, they have also won the Champions League Twenty20 in 2010 and 2014

2008 - PRESENT 

During the first player auctions for the inaugural IPL season conducted in January 2008, the Chennai franchise bought a number of contemporary star cricketers such as Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Matthew Hayden, Stephen Fleming, Muttiah Muralitharan and Michael Hussey. Dhoni became the costliest player of the auction, as the Chennai franchise bought him for $1.5 million. The franchise named Dhoni as the captain of the team and appointed Kepler Wessels as the head coach. They played their first game on 19 April 2008 against Kings XI Punjab at Mohali. The Super Kings won the game by 33 runs after posting 240/5 in 20 overs, which was the highest total of the tournament, a record surpassed by themselves in 2010.The Super Kings ended the league stage with eight wins from 14 games and finished third on the points table. They beat the Kings XI Punjab by 9 wickets in the semifinal. The Super Kings faced the Rajasthan Royals in the final of the IPL at Mumbai. Batting first, the Super Kings scored 163/5 in 20 overs and lost the game by 3 wickets off the final delivery of the match. They also earned a spot in the inaugural Champions League Twenty20 along with Rajasthan, but the tournament was canceled due to the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the Super Kings, along with Rajasthan, received $5 million each as compensation. Fleming, who had decided to retire from all forms of the game after the first season of the IPL, took over as the coach of the Super Kings team from Wessels for the next season which was to be held in South Africa.

For the 2009 season, the Super Kings bought English all-rounder Andrew Flintoff for $1.55 million at the auction making him the highest-paid IPL cricketer along with English teammate Kevin Pietersen who was bought for the same amount by Royal Challengers Bangalore. The Super Kings finished with 17 points from 14 matches and earned a second place at the league table. However, at the semi-finals, their hopes of entering the final for a second time were crushed by the Royal Challengers who beat them by 6 wickets. The Super Kings opener Matthew Hayden, who scored 572 runs in 12 innings with 5 half-centuries at an average of 52 and strike-rate of 145, won the Orange Cap for the leading run-scorer of the season and was also adjudged Player of the Tournament.

2010: IPL and CLT20 double

With seven wins from 14 matches, Chennai finished with the same number of points as three other teams with two semi-final spots at stake. Chennai got the third place as they had the better net run rate of the four teams which finished on 14 points. In the semifinal, the Super Kings scored a modest 142/7 in 20 overs against the defending champions Deccan Chargers. 

But an inspired bowling spell from Doug Bollinger (4/13 in four overs) did the most damage as the Chargers were bowled out for 104. This gave the Super Kings a 38-run victory that took them to the final. The Super Kings faced the tournament favorites Mumbai Indians at their home ground in the final. Suresh Raina's 57 (35) helped the Super Kings recover from 68/3 after 12 overs to put up 168/5 at the end of their 20 overs. 

Then, their spin duo of Ravichandran Ashwin and Muralitharan conceded only 41 runs in the 8 overs bowled between them to help the Super Kings won the game by 22 runs and secure their first ever IPL title. With this, the Super Kings also qualified for the 2010 Champions League Twenty20 that was held in South Africa.

At the Champions League, the Super Kings were placed in Group A along with champions of Twenty20 competitions from Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Sri Lanka. The Super Kings topped the Group table with three wins and a Super Over defeat to the Victorian Bushrangers. In the semi-final at Durban, the Super Kings comprehensively defeated IPL rivals Royal Challengers Bangalore by 52 runs. Raina won the Man of the Match for his unbeaten 94 off 48 balls. The Super Kings played their first CLT20 final at Johannesburg where they beat the Chevrolet Warriors by 8 wickets, becoming the first IPL team to win the CLT20. Murali Vijay won not only the Man of the Match in the final for his 58 but also the Golden Bat for scoring the most runs in the tournament and Ashwin, who was the leading wicket-taker, was adjudged the Player of the Series.

2011 IPL TITLE

In 2011, as two new teams were added to the IPL, the IPL Governing Council declared that each franchise could retain a maximum of four players of their squad, only three of whom can be Indian players, and the rest of the international players would be put in the mega-auction. The Chennai franchise, keen to have the same set of core players, retained captain MS Dhoni, vice-captain Suresh Raina, Murali Vijay and all-rounder Albie Morkel for a total of $4.5 million. The retention left them with the power of spending only $4.5 million at the mega-auction. At the auction, they bought back some of their star players of previous seasons such as Hussey, Ashwin, Bollinger and Subramaniam Badrinath. In the 2011 IPL, they lost three of their first five games which placed them at the bottom of the ten-team points table. But then, they went on to win seven of their next eight games to finish second and register a spot in the knockout stages. They faced the top-ranked team Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Qualifying final which they won by 6 wickets thanks to an unbeaten 73 from Suresh Raina.In the final, they faced the same opponents again, which was held at their home ground Chepauk. Vijay and Hussey put on a 133-run first-wicket partnership that helped the Super Kings to post a total of 205/5. Their bowlers, then, restricted Bangalore to only 147 to take the Super Kings to the second consecutive title in the IPL. 

2018 IPL TITLE

Chennai's campaign started off with a thrilling one wicket win over the Mumbai Indians in the first match of the season thanks to an unbeaten 68 off 30 balls from Dwayne Bravo. Playing their first home game in Chennai, the Kings successfully managed to chase down a target of 202 set by the Kolkata Knight Riders, aided by a quickfire half-century by Sam Billings. The team then went on to lose to Kings XI Punjab in Mohali but bounced back by winning three matches in a row against the Rajasthan Royals, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Royal Challengers Bangalore. The Super Kings' next eight matches resulted in them alternating between victories and defeats by winning against the Delhi Daredevils, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kings XI Punjab and losing against the Mumbai Indians, Rajasthan Royals, Delhi Daredevils and the Kolkata Knight Riders. The league stage ended with the Super Kings in second place behind the Sunrisers. Chennai then went on to post back-to-back victories against the Sunrisers Hyderabad in the first qualifier and in the final to win the Indian Premier League for the third time since the inception of the tournament. Star all-rounder Shane Watson was adjudged Man of the Match for his 117* from 57 balls.

Three of the five centuries scored in the 2018 season were by players belonging to the Chennai Super Kings (Ambati Rayudu 100* and Shane Watson 106, 117*). The Super Kings also became the first team to defeat an opposing team (Sunrisers Hyderabad) four times in a single season.

2021 IPL TITLE

During the 2021 auctions, CSK picked up Test specialist Cheteshwar Pujara for base price of Rs 50 lakh while spending a whopping Rs 9.25 crore on Krishnappa Gowtham, making the spinner the most expensive uncapped Indian buy ever. They also bought English all-rounder Moeen Ali for Rs 7 crore. Along with the three, CSK brought some uncapped Indian talents like Harishankar Reddy, Bhagath Varma and Chezhian Harinishanth for their base price of Rs 20 lakh each. Rajasthan Royals player Robin Uthappa was traded to the Super Kings as well.

CSK begun the first leg 2021 season with a loss against Delhi capitals. After that, they carried a consecutive 5 match winning streak, followed by a defeat against Mumbai Indians. Following the second wave of COVID_19 pandemic, and the rise in COVID positive cases in many team camps, IPL was postponed.

When the second leg of IPL resumed in UAE, CSK carried a consecutive 4 match winning streak and thus, ensured its berth in playoffs. CSK was the first team to qualify for playoffs in 2021 season. CSK completed the league stage by lossing last 3 matches. Yet, CSK managed to remain within top 2 places in points table throughout the season.

In Qualifier 1, CSK beat Delhi Capitals to storm into finals for the 9th time in their history. In finals, CSK showcased an all-round performance against KKR to clinch their 4th IPL title.

 The team is captained by Mahendra Singh Dhoni and coached by Stephen Fleming.

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