Former Indian opener Aakash Chopra feels that Ben Stokes may just be a very expensive mistake from Chennai Super Kings after the Englishman’s injury-ravaged campaign with CSK in IPL 2023. The Yellow Army would go on to win the trophy even with Stokes left on the bench for the majority of the games due to his injuries but even when he regained full fitness, the English all-rounder may have proved to be a mismatch.
Having been bought by the five-time IPL champs for a staggering Rs 16.25 crore Stokes was only just returning back to full fitness from a knee injury. He would play just two matches at the start of the season, before being sidelined again due to his injury woes and didn’t get the chance to play again.
Chopra felt that even when the Englishman was back to his full fitness, the team combination of CSK was such that they had no place for fit Stokes.
“You bought Ben Stokes for 16-odd crores; he was extremely expensive, but what happened after that – you got him to bat at No. 3, and then he got injured. When he was supposed to come back after injury, you realised that he doesn’t fit in your scheme of things,” said Chopra on his YouTube channel.
Pointing the fact that Devon Conway, Maheesh Theekshana and Moeen Ali were always likely to start, which hampered Stokes’ chances.
“Devon Conway will bat at the top, Moeen Ali in the middle because he is an all-rounder, and then you will have to pick Maheesh Theekshana because you don’t have a spinner other than Jaddu (Ravindra Jadeja) as Moeen Ali doesn’t bowl much.”
And Stokes wasn’t the only player whose injury forced MS Dhoni to get creative as they were forced to experiment with players such as Dwaine Pretorius and Sisanda Magala due to Deepak Chahar’s hamstring woes.
“You had death-bowling problems right from the start. It’s not that if Deepak Chahar hadn’t become unfit, Deepak Chahar could have been your death bowler alongside Tushar Deshpande. It wouldn’t have worked out with both of them. So you had to play Matheesha Pathirana or one of Dwaine Pretorius and Sisanda Magala,” added the cricketer-turned-commentator.
In the end though, Dhoni and CSK found a way to beat Gujarat Titans by 5 wickets through the DLS method and they were able to pull level with Mumbai Indians at five IPL titles each.
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