The season changed but the story of powerplay of Chennai Super Kings did not change, the situation is the same with and without Dhoni.

New Delhi. The season has changed, but the story of Chennai Super Kings' batting in the powerplay has not changed. In its first match of IPL 2026, against Rajasthan Royals in Guwahati on Monday, CSK lost 4 wickets for 41 runs in the first six overs. This start once again raised the same question which was associated with him even in IPL 2025. Why does a team with such a strong batting get stuck again and again in the easiest scoring phase of a T20 innings?

If we compare this figure in the context of the entire IPL, it looks even worse. The tournament started with big scores in the powerplay in the first two matches. From this it became clear where the level of powerplay batting has now reached in the league. In such a situation, 41/4 is not just a slow start, but it is, in a way, a fall hidden in a slow start. CSK was already playing without MS Dhoni but this batting problem is much earlier than the absence of one player.

The pattern of 2025 continues in 2026

In IPL 2025, CSK's powerplay batting was already among the weakest teams of the tournament. In 14 innings, he scored 731 runs in powerplay at a run rate of 8.70, the average powerplay score was 52.21. Even more damaging was the play of these six overs. CSK lost 29 wickets in the powerplay in the entire season, i.e. an average of 2.07 wickets per innings, while the dot ball percentage was 42.66%.

Most of the losses were incurred in the first half of the powerplay itself. In overs 1 to 3, CSK scored runs at a run rate of only 7.76 and played dots on 49.60% of the balls. The run rate increased to 9.64 in overs 4 to 6, but by then they were often trying to recover the phase they had already lost. For this reason, the score of 41/4 against Rajasthan Royals does not seem like one bad evening, but like a series. This is 11.21 runs less than CSK's own average powerplay score of 2025, while four wickets are almost double their 2025 average. In a single innings all the old problems returned, slow run rate, loss of wickets and complete collapse of the top order.

The matter of concern for CSK is not just low scores. The real concern is that the pattern of this fall is the same as last year. CSK's powerplay batting in IPL 2025 was bad because it was low scoring and high loss. The same story has been repeated in the first powerplay of IPL 2026.