IPL 2025: Exit Interviews - CSK, RR & SRH

For a cricket team, exit interviews suck. Because there is only one great result in a season, winning it. And everyone else has to take a good hard look at themselves.

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Exit interviews can be wondrous things. When you are leaving the company, you get to unleash on your former employers and people from that company who have annoyed you. Like Charlotte, who sits across from your cubicle doing almost no work because she is busy trying to get the attention of a clear sociopath who will only break her already fractured heart. Just open the spreadsheet, Charlotte. At least pretend you are working.

But for a cricket team, exit interviews suck. Because there is only one great result in a season, winning it. And everyone else has to take a good hard look at themselves.

To speed up that process, we have ourselves taken a good hard look at the teams who have been so bad this year, that we could start this process super early. Thanks for the misery, fellas.

Here we are looking at just how bad teams were, and how they may be able to adjust the suck for next year.

CSK

The ratios in the team maps tell us how much better or worse they are than normal. 1 is par, higher the better.

CSK struggled to make a positive impact with the bat in any phase of the innings. They were the slowest-scoring side in the first six and the last four overs, while being among the bottom three through the middle period. They also kept losing wickets while doing so, which means that it wasn’t a case of them keeping wickets in hand and going hard at the back end of games. Their bowling wasn’t as bad. Khaleel Ahmed and Noor Ahmad did well in powerplay and middle overs respectively. But Matheesha Pathirana has looked far from his best this season.

Chennai have a 1-5 record at home. Their only win was against Mumbai, who didn’t have Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya. Their batting finally stepped up only in their sixth home game (against Punjab), when they were already at the bottom of the table. They scored 190, but failed to defend it. Before that, they made 154 against SRH and 103/9 versus KKR in the first innings. So they clearly struggled with putting up good totals at home.

Their mid-season replacement signings have certainly been very interesting. Ayush Mhatre, Dewald Brevis and Urvil Patel are 17, 21 and 26 respectively, and each of them has shown immense potential in the limited opportunities so far. Can they look to build a side for the future with these young batters on their roster? Of course, they will have to be wary of second-season blues (hello, Jake Fraser-McGurk). And you need the right balance of youth and experience if you’re rebuilding for the long term.

They spent 9.75 crore on R Ashwin, who hasn’t been effective. Ravindra Jadeja seems to have found some success at his number four – his new batting spot. Do they think that’s sustainable? Also, can they look to buy him back for less than the 18 crores he was retained for? Should they move on from MS Dhoni and invest in long-term options?