No Dhoni again; CSK captain says 'thanks to legend' at the toss

NEW DELHI:The anticipation astir MS Dhoni’s instrumentality was high, but it wasn’t to beryllium arsenic the seasoned remained retired of action. Mumbai Indians won the flip and opted to tract against Chennai Super Kings successful their IPL 2026 clash astatine the Wankhede Stadium connected Thursday.Dhoni is yet to diagnostic successful IPL 2026. He has been recovering from a calf strain sustained conscionable earlier the tourney began precocious past month, and expectations from fans had built up importantly up of the marquee encounter.A time earlier the match, Dhoni lit up the stadium, entertaining camerapersons, groundstaff and unit members with his lighter side. He was seen playing with the robot canine “Champak” during a signifier league astatine Wankhede Stadium.

The five-time IPL-winning skipper had a rigorous grooming league connected Tuesday, wherever helium kept wickets and aboriginal spent clip batting successful the nets.On Wednesday, helium had a abbreviated archetypal stint earlier taking a break, returning aboriginal for astir an hr to look throwdown specialists and accelerated bowlers.

However, for fans, the hold to spot their superstar continues.Mumbai Indians skipper Hardik Pandya, aft winning the toss, said: "We are gonna vessel first.

Lot of boxes were ticked, strength was there, we needed that crippled wherever everyone comes successful and chips in. There was a conscious effort that strength is successful your hands, we wanted to conscionable person amusive and things went our way. It looks green, but it played truly well. Same team."On the different hand, CSK skipper Ruturaj Gaikwad made 1 alteration to the XI." We would person bowled archetypal arsenic well, but it was a 50-50 call. It looks a bully wicket and coming present astatine Wankhede Stadium, you person to bat good irrespective of whether you’re batting archetypal oregon bowling first.

So it is conscionable astir putting up a large amusement adjacent if you’re batting first. We are doing truly well. It’s conscionable that we are not capable to currency successful connected a mates of moments. But I deliberation we pulled it backmost truly good during our bowling successful the past game.

Even batting, we had started disconnected truly well. But arsenic I said, it’s conscionable a mates of moments wherever we person to marque definite we currency successful and we get that win. But everyone is assured and acceptable to go," helium said."(Wherever you go, men successful yellow, there’s a batch of noise?) Yes, evidently each acknowledgment to the fable (Dhoni) who is not present unfortunately. But evidently it is due to the fact that of him. Everywhere you go, we person a batch of support. So hopefully we’ll marque them blessed tonight. We’ve got a mates of changes," the CSK skipper said.Mumbai Indians (Playing XI): Quinton de Kock(w), Naman Dhir, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya(c), Tilak Varma, Sherfane Rutherford, Mitchell Santner, Jasprit Bumrah, Krish Bhagat, AM Ghazanfar, Ashwani KumarChennai Super Kings (Playing XI): Sanju Samson(w), Ruturaj Gaikwad(c), Sarfaraz Khan, Dewald Brevis, Shivam Dube, Kartik Sharma, Jamie Overton, Noor Ahmad, Anshul Kamboj, Gurjapneet Singh, Mukesh Choudhary