Matheesha Pathirana and the Dwayne Bravo Sized Hole in the Chennai Super Kings Line-up

Throughout his career, Dwayne Bravo, in his ten-season stint, did his magic in the back end of the innings. On quite a few occasions, MS Dhoni would often hold him back and then have Dwayne Bravo bowl all his four overs in one go from the 14th over.

This season, with Chennai back in Chepauk, death bowling was an issue. They did not have too many options for the back end, and against both Gujarat and Lucknow, in their first two games, Tushar Deshpande bore the brunt of the death overs struggles. He could not hit the yorker, a delivery that does not come to him naturally. In the last two years though, Deshpande spent quite a bit of time with Dwayne Bravo and stuck to his plan of attempting outside of Yorkers, with an off-side packed field. The plan worked, with Dwayne Bravo guiding Tushar Deshpande, who executed the Yorker well.

CSK though were already depleted with their fast bowlers. Kyle Jamieson and Mukesh Choudary were ruled out before the season. A couple of games in, both Deepak Chahar and Sisanda Magala were injured, and CSK had to rope in Matheesha Pathirana, who had just recovered from Covid. Facing Bangalore, with Faf and Maxwell blazing, it was Matheesha Pathirana who put the brakes on their attack as he closed out the game for the Chennai Super Kings.

Throughout his and Deshpande’s time this season, a common feature has been Dwayne Bravo. Whenever both of them had the ball in the back end, Dwayne Bravo could be seen watching from the boundary, near the ball boys, keeping a close eye on his death bowlers. With Dwayne Bravo in the background, the Chennai Super Kings found a coach who has made it a lot easier to build a crop of bowlers around him. He helped bring Akash Singh up to speed and is often seen with both Pathirana and Deshpande.

Coming back to Pathirana, his action, and ability to hit the Yorkers consistently has made it easy for MS Dhoni to use him. With Pathirana hitting the length well, and with Deepak Chahar working his magic in the initial phase, MS Dhoni has found it easy to hold Pathirana back for the end, which has now made the death overs a very strong stage of the game for Chennai Super Kings.

With a lot of questions on who could replace Dwayne Bravo, after the master death bowler announced his retirement, CSK have found two players to replace two of their old stars. In Pathirana they now have an out-and-out death bowler, who has a Malinga-like action, and in Tushar Deshpande, they have a bowler like Shardul Thakur, who could be very expensive but also picks up a fair amount of wickets.