'It looked like we were watching 22-year-old Dhoni again' - Parthiv Patel on MS Dhoni's brilliant catch to dismiss Vijay Shankar

The Chennai Super Kings beat Gujarat Titans by 63 runs to record their second win of the IPL 2024 at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai on Tuesday. JioCinema IPL experts AB de Villiers and Parthiv Patel spoke of the performances of MS Dhoni and Ajinkya Rahane while fielding, along with the continued batting excellence of Shivam Dube (51 runs), exclusively on Match Centre Live. Excerpts:

AB de Villiers spoke on Shivam Dube’s knock: It’s fantastic to see Shivam like this. He never really broke free in the RCB changing room. He was quite a shy guy, worked really hard, and asked a lot of questions back in the day. I think he did a bit of learning there but never felt comfortable. He talks about being free in CSK, and that is the magic recipe that MSD, Gaikwad, Stephen Fleming, and all the guys from the past have set up over there. It’s a workhorse of a franchise that just makes it work every time, every single season, with new players who feel free to express themselves.

Parthiv Patel spoke on MS Dhoni’s wicketkeeping effort that got Vijay Shankar out: I have never seen him practice wicketkeeping. The one important thing we can see here is the distance that he covered. A lot of wicketkeepers have an initial movement where they usually go towards the leg side, but MS Dhoni consistently dives in the same direction and can cover two meters of distance. It looked like we were watching a 22-year-old Dhoni again. You have to praise him.

A lot of young wicketkeepers should learn this technical point. When you use one leg to move to the leg side, you can’t cover the distance on the off-side. Dhoni’s anticipation is always correct, which allows him to cover the distance well, and very few times do we see that he needs to dive for the ball, because his anticipation is so good, and he covers the distance.

On Ajinkya Rahane’s catch of David Miller: It was a remarkable catch. When you’re fielding in the deep, the hardest catches come when you have to dive forward. We’ve already seen the amazing catches Rahane is capable of taking. If we talk about an all-round fielder, it’s him. We’ve seen him pick up great catches in the slips for India before. Today, he stood in a difficult spot, deep mid-wicket, which is David Miller’s hitting zone, and he picked up a wonderful catch.