CSK's enduring fandom and life after MS Dhoni

Relief would have swept through the CSK camp on Monday night after MS Dhoni marshalled his team to only their second win of the season.

- Sharda Ugra

Yet they remain at the bottom of the table, have hit the fewest sixes in the competition and are the only team scoring at eight an over. (KKR are second lowest at 9.05). After the win in Lucknow, their management's tiptoeing around Dhoni will be ignored for a bit with Dhoni's own brand getting fresh oxygen.

This CSK-Dhoni umbilical cord looks massively tangled. From the outside, it's not clear who's at which end: is Dhoni attached to CSK or CSK to Dhoni? One of the market theories is that CSK depends on Brand Dhoni because Brand Dhoni is bigger than Brand CSK. Even though the 17th Brand Finance IPL 2024 valuation report has CSK as the most valuable franchise $122m. Ahead of Mumbai Indians but does that mean Dhoni is... never mind.

A Chennai friend says that CSK without Dhoni means a steep drop in ticket sales and empty stands at Chepauk. Surely not in a city like Chennai whose 'knowledgeable' crowds have been memed to immortality? There's got to be more to CSK than just being a previously non-stop now start-stutter-stop-restart engine for Brand Dhoni.