In a moment of pride for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) fans around the world, their talismanic captain MS Dhoni broke a record held by former Rajasthan Royals (RR) skipper Rahul Dravid by becoming the oldest player to take the field as the leader of a team in the Indian Premier League (IPL).
CSK take on Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) at the MCA Stadium in Pune on Sunday as they look to end their miserable run in the ongoing 2022 season. Ahead of the match, the defending champions announced that Ravindra Jadeja was relinquishing the team's captaincy to focus on his own all-round performance which has been subpar this season.
"Ravindra Jadeja has decided to relinquish captaincy to focus and concentrate more on his game and has requested MS Dhoni to lead Chennai Super Kings," read the statement released by the club on Saturday.
Dhoni is currently 40 years and 298 days old, breaking a nine-year-old record held by Dravid, who was 40 years and 268 days old when he took the field for Rajasthan.
Meanwhile, the toll of captaining the four-time IPL champions was visible in the performances of Jadeja, who has only 112 runs this season at a strike rate of 121.74.
His statistics with the ball have also been unimpressive. He has just five wickets this season and an economy rate of 8.19.
And Dhoni has been on and off this season. He hit a brilliant 50 in a losing cause against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the opening game of the season, before winning the match against Mumbai Indians (MI) by hitting a four off the last ball of the match, being bowled by Jaydev Unadkat.
Jadeja was underwhelming in the last match against Punjab Kings (PBKS), giving away 18 runs in two overs as CSK went on to lose to Punjab.
