The CEO of Chennai Super Kings (CSK), Kasi Viswanathan, said that Mahendra Singh Dhoni never whined about his knee problem during the Indian Premier League 2023.
The famous captain led CSK to a record-tying fifth Indian Premier League (IPL) title in 2023. This season, he didn’t miss a single game, even though his left knee was in a cast and tightly strapped. But the 41-year-old had surgery in Mumbai earlier this month and is now going through rehab.
Kasi Viswanathan said that the management never asked Dhoni if he wanted to play or not.
He said that if Dhoni didn’t want to play, he would have told them straight. He also said that the people in charge knew how hard it was for him to play. He also said that Dhoni earned a lot of praise from that point of view.
“We never asked him questions like, ‘Do you want to play or sit out?’ He would have told us right away if he couldn’t do it. We knew it was hard for him to play, but everyone knows how much he cares about the team, how he leads, and how the team is better because of him. “You have to like him from that point of view,” Kasi Viswanathan told ESPN cricinfo.
Dhoni’s surgery is over, he’s happy, and he’s getting better. Kasi Viswanathan went on to say that Dhoni hadn’t said anything about his knee until the IPL 2023 final. Even when everyone could see how hard it was for him to run, he never said a word. He also said that the captain had told them he was going to have surgery after the last game against the Gujarat Titans (GT).
“He never said anything to anyone about his knee until the final. Even though everyone knew and you could see how hard he was trying to run, he never once whined. After the final, he said, ‘Okay, I’ll have surgery.’ He’s done with his surgery, he’s happy, and he’s getting better,” the CSK CEO said.
Kasi Viswanathan also said that the CSK management won’t ask him if he will be on the team for the next season. He also said that the former captain of India would usually call first and only tell CSK boss N Srinivasan.
During the presentation after the final match of the IPL 2023 season, the 41-year-old agreed that it was easy to end his IPL career after winning the title, but he said he wanted to come back for at least one more season if his body could handle it.