Chennai Super Kings coach Stephen Fleming has said that CSK haven’t been able to read the Chepauk pitch. During the IPL 2025 auction, CSK had stacked their squad with spin, but the pitch seemed to assist the seamers more than the spinners during their second home game of the season. Royal Challengers Bengaluru bowlers Josh Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar Kumar claimed combined figures of 7-0-41-4 to shut CSK down in their chase of 197.
“Well, as we’ve been telling you for a number of years, there was no home advantage at Chepauk,” Fleming said after CSK suffered their biggest defeat at home. “We’ve won away from home a couple of times. And we haven’t been able to read… we’ve been really honest with you. We haven’t been able to read the wickets here in the last couple of years. So, it’s not new. We are trying to come to grips each day with what we get, and we don’t know.”
The Chepauk pitches in IPL 2024 didn’t suit spin, which has been CSK’s traditional strength. The fast bowlers took 74 wickets while the spinners claimed only 25 at the venue last season.
“It’s not the Chepauk [of old] where you can just go in and play four spinners,” Fleming said. “We’re having to work really hard to try and understand what the nature of each pitch is, and it’s quite different.”
“No, we didn’t get it right,” Fleming said. “It’s so hard to read, but we thought it was going to skid on with the dew, but it actually got a bit tacky. So, it certainly made it harder here.”
CSK’s batters don’t usually swing from the get-go – which can become a talking point when big chases go wrong – but that doesn’t make them a bad team, Fleming insisted.
“We talk about firepower, we have firepower all the way through,” Fleming said. “I don’t understand this question. Just because we don’t swing from ball one and have a little bit of luck go away, we’ll see at the end. Just see at the end who wins it. It’s a positive brand of cricket, no doubt about it, but don’t discount us.”
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