MS Dhoni was a brilliant captain, he understood his players well: Muttiah Muralitharan

The 14^th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) will resume on September 19 in the UAE. Chennai Super Kings (CSK) were one of the teams to reach Dubai early for the preparation. The franchise has been one of the most successful in the 14 years of the league. The CSK team always believes in maintaining the core of the squad and that is one of the reasons for their success.

During the first half of the IPL, CSK had a great tournament under their enigmatic leader MS Dhoni. The franchise won five games out of seven and are currently sitting pretty second on the points table. Their skipper Dhoni was, as usual, spot on with his captaincy moves and so far used his resources well. Right since the league’s inception, the 40-year-old has led the team barring the two seasons in 2016 and 2017.

Muttiah Muralitharan who was part of the team for the first few years spoke about MS Dhoni and what made him a very good captain. While speaking to ESPNcricinfo, Murali also shed light on the IPL, when it was a relatively new tournament back in 2008 and 2009. “The standard was very good. If you see the first IPL was all 200 runs and the wickets were perfect. They were flat, with hardly any spin, and fast bowlers had to really work hard for the season. So always there were so many things happening in the first IPL

Everyone was figuring out how to play, but still, the players were very good. Every team had good players and every team was good,” Murali said.

MS Dhoni as a leader was very good: Muttiah Muralitharan

“Dhoni first time captaining the franchise was very good and he was understanding the players and all these players were legends in their countries. So, he understood the players very much and he brought the right team in the place. And I enjoyed the tournament.” Murali added.

The former Sri Lankan spinner also spoke about how he enjoyed his time while bowling and how he was keener on stopping the runs. “I enjoyed bowling and mainly I was trying to stop runs rather than going for wickets. So, that made me get wickets as well. But I was not worried about that [picking wickets]. I might have 50 or 40 odd wickets. Or 13 or 14 wickets in a season. Somebody could take 20 or 21 wickets in the season to finish with. But my economy rate was pretty good and I was helping the team at the time.”