Chepauk Is No Longer a CSK Fortress: 98 Matches of Data Prove It

Every CSK fan can describe Chepauk with their eyes closed. It's slow. It grips. It turns. It's the place where 150 is a fair score, where spinners are kings, and where visiting teams arrive with a plan and leave with a headache. It is ours — and we've built a whole identity around the idea that nobody plays here like we do. It's a reputation that goes well beyond the IPL too — Chepauk is one of India's oldest and most storied grounds, still adding to that history today.

It's not just us saying it, either. Even Virat Kohli, walking in as an opposing captain, put it plainly on JioHotstar's 18 Calling 18 in May 2025: "In Chennai, of course, there are Chennai fans — it's just yellow and CSK fans everywhere." That's the fortress, seen from the visitors' dressing room.

But grounds change, and so does the IPL. So I did what I always do and went through it ball by ball: 98 IPL matches at Chepauk across 13 seasons, from 2008 to 2026, set against every other ground in the same seasons, split by phase, by spin and pace, by toss and chase. What came back is more interesting than the reputation. Part of that reputation holds up. Part of it doesn't. And one thing has changed in a way that should genuinely worry us.

The short version

• Chepauk was not always slow. In 2008–13 it scored faster than the rest of the IPL (8.16 runs an over against 7.87). The slow-Chepauk reputation was built from 2015 onwards.
• It has stayed about one run an over slower than the league since 2015 (8.80 against 9.79 in 2024–26), but the league moved up by 1.2 runs an over and Chepauk moved up by 1.3. It kept pace with the IPL's scoring boom rather than escaping it.
• What really changed is chasing. Sides batting first won 63% of the time in 2015–19 and only 32% in 2024–26. Captains now choose to field 73% of the time, and the second innings is scored faster than the first.
• Spin lost its grip. Spinners' economy at Chepauk went from 6.48 to 8.15, their dot-ball rate from 41% to 31%, and CSK's own spinners went from 6.02 an over to 8.43.
• CSK's home edge has all but gone. CSK's net run rate at Chepauk fell from +0.77 an over (2015–19) to +0.05 (2024–26), and in the middle overs from +1.19 to −0.26.
• The fortress cracked in 2025. CSK won one of six home games and lost five, their worst home season at Chepauk, with five different clubs winning. Since 2023, ten of CSK's 13 home defeats came with the other side chasing, and Punjab have beaten them there four visits in a row.
• 2026 was an outlier, not the new normal: 9.50 runs an over and 18.4 sixes a match.

The rest of this piece is the evidence for all of that. Then, right at the end, I'll give you my own take on what kind of players CSK should be hunting for now — and I'll be upfront about where the numbers stop and my opinion starts.

Was Chepauk ever really slow?

Here is Chepauk era by era, against the rest of the IPL in the same seasons. Chepauk hosted no IPL games in 2009, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2020 or 2022, and just one in 2018, when CSK's other home fixtures were moved to Pune during the Cauvery protests. So I've grouped the seasons it did host into four eras.

Look at the first row. In 2008–13 Chepauk was a high-scoring ground by IPL standards, with more sixes a match than the league average (10.7 against 9.4). The stereotype simply didn't fit. It only appears in the second row: by 2015–19 Chepauk was scoring 1.07 runs an over less than everywhere else, and 2019 was the extreme — an average first-innings score of just 144 and an average second-innings score of 125.

Since then, the gap has hovered around a run an over. Between 2015–19 and 2024–26, Chepauk's run rate rose by 1.29 and the rest of the IPL's rose by 1.21. Same climb, same distance behind. Sixes tell the same story: 10.6 a match at Chepauk in 2015–19 and 14.4 in 2024–26, while the rest of the IPL went from 13.4 to 18.6. And the big scores have arrived: three totals of 200 or more in the 16 matches of 2015–19, but nine in the 22 matches of 2024–26.

The season-by-season view shows why the picture is bumpy. The gap was widest in 2019 (7.08 against 8.61), closed a little in 2023, reopened in 2024 and 2025, and then almost shut in 2026.

2026 is the one that stands out: 9.50 runs an over against a league rate of 9.92, 18.4 sixes a match against the league's 19.4, an average first-innings score of 188, and five totals of 200-plus in seven matches, including the Punjab Kings' chase of 210 and CSK's own chase of 208 against Lucknow. But it was seven matches. One season isn't a trend.

It's worth noticing the season before it. 2025 had the widest gap of any of the last five seasons Chepauk hosted — 8.37 against 9.75 — and it was also the season CSK won just one of six home games. I'll come back to that.

Phase by phase: the middle overs are still the fingerprint

If Chepauk still plays slower than the league, where in the innings is that slowness hiding? Here is runs per over by phase, with the gap to the rest of the IPL in brackets.

Three things stand out.

The powerplay is now ordinary. In 2021–23 it was dead level with the league (8.29 against 8.26), and in 2008–13 it was actually faster. In 2024–26 the gap is 0.73. Chepauk no longer holds the new ball back in any special way.

The middle overs are the ground's true fingerprint. After 2015 the gap in overs 7–15 has never been smaller than a run an over: −1.45, −0.98, −1.22. It's the one phase where Chepauk is consistently slower than the rest of the league.

And it no longer costs extra wickets. Chepauk in 2024–26 loses 6.02 wickets an innings; the rest of the IPL loses 6.00. In 2008–13 the numbers were 5.70 and 5.87. Teams are scoring more at Chepauk and not losing more wickets to do it. Overs 7–15 are still slow, but they're no longer a graveyard — which matters enormously for the next section.

The chase era

This is the biggest structural change at Chepauk, and it happened quietly.

In 2015–19 the side batting first won at Chepauk 63% of the time, and only 56% of captains chose to field. By 2024–26 the side batting first won just 32%, and 73% of captains chose to field. It's a hard flip.

Look at the second-innings scoring rate too. In 2015–19 Chepauk's second innings was scored at 7.11 an over against 7.89 in the first — the ground got slower as the game went on, and defending was a sound plan. In 2024–26 the second innings (8.87) is scored faster than the first (8.73). The old "it's harder to bat second" instinct is out of date, and this isn't a Chepauk quirk — it lines up with two changes across the whole IPL. The Impact Player rule, in since the 2023 season, gives both sides a fresh player mid-innings and has added scoring across the league; and captains everywhere started fielding first far more often once it arrived. Chepauk's own evening dew, which curators still mention every season, only adds to the case for bowling first there. Put the two together and defending a total at Chepauk stopped being the safe option.

Chepauk has also seen some of its biggest chases in these years. Lucknow chased 213 in 2024 (that's the highest successful chase at the ground), Punjab chased 210 in 2026, and CSK themselves chased 208 against Lucknow. In 2025, CSK were bowled out for 103 batting first against KKR and for 154 against Sunrisers — both times they lost the toss, both times the chasing side won comfortably.

So what's a good score to set at Chepauk now?

The sweet spot since 2019 has been 170–189: the side batting first won 8 of 11. Below 150 is nearly hopeless (1 of 14). And notice that 190 and over is not safe — only 7 of 12. When I say the ground has changed, this is what I mean: a score that would have been a match-winner in 2015 is now merely a decent start for the chasing team.

What happened to spin?

Chepauk's identity was spin. So what did spin do here in the last three seasons?

Here's the era-by-era split (covering about 98% of the balls bowled at the ground — a handful of occasional and forgotten bowlers are left out):

The pattern is clear and it's not flattering for spin:

• Spinners are bowling less. They delivered 47% of the balls in 2021–23 and 36% in 2024–26.
• They're being hit harder. Spin's economy went from 6.48 in 2015–19 to 8.15 in 2024–26. Their dot-ball rate fell from 41.4% to 31.1%, and they now concede a six every 15 balls, up from one every 24.
• Pace has quietly taken over the "control" job. Pace bowlers at Chepauk now produce more dot balls (36.6%) than spinners (31.1%), and take a wicket more often (every 19.0 balls against 21.5).

Spin still has the better economy (8.15 against 9.13) — the ground is still kinder to spinners than to seamers — but the gap between them has shrunk from about 1.9 runs an over in 2015–19 to about 1.0.

How wickets fall has shifted too:

Stumpings have fallen from 5% of dismissals to 2%, and run-outs from 10% to 4%. Bowled has risen from 13% to 18%. My reading — and it is only a reading — is that batters are less often tied down into mistakes: fewer are beaten by the turn while stepping out, fewer are caught in a scramble, and more are simply being beaten by pace or missing straight ones.

CSK's home edge

This is the section that should make CSK fans sit up. Here is how much CSK have outscored their opponents (runs per over scored minus runs per over conceded) at home, phase by phase, compared with away.

In 2015–19, CSK at home were dominant in the middle overs (+1.19 an over) and the death (+1.58). That was the fortress: the opposition crawled through overs 7–15 against CSK's spinners, and CSK then finished harder than anyone.

By 2024–26 the middle-overs edge has flipped to −0.26 — CSK are now being outscored there — and the death-overs edge has shrunk to +0.40. The overall margin has collapsed from +0.77 an over to +0.05. Meanwhile CSK's away net run rate fell too, to −0.34, so home is still better than the road — but the home advantage, measured as home net minus away net, is about 0.39 an over now against 0.81 in 2015–19. It's roughly half of what it was.

This is where the spin story bites. Look at CSK's own attack at Chepauk:

CSK's spinners went from 6.02 an over at Chepauk in 2015–19 to 8.43 in 2024–26, and from 48% of CSK's balls to 36%. In the middle overs alone — their home turf — they went from 5.61 an over to 7.86. The trick that used to win CSK games at home — squeezing overs 7–15 with spin — is the trick that has stopped working.

The records back it up. Before 2024, CSK won 45 and lost 19 of their completed games at Chepauk. In 2024–26 they won 10 and lost 10.

The fortress that fell: who beat CSK at Chepauk

For the better part of a decade, "nobody beats CSK at Chepauk" wasn't a slogan. It was arithmetic. In 2011 CSK played eight home games and won all eight. In 2015 they won six of seven. Across 2015–19 they won 13 and lost just 3, which is 81% at home.

Then the arithmetic changed. Here is every season CSK have played at the ground (2018 shows a single game because the Cauvery protests pushed the rest of CSK's home fixtures to Pune):

Before 2023, CSK won 40 of 56 home games (71%). Since 2023 it's 15 wins and 13 defeats (54%). And in the middle of that stretch sits the season I'd rather not remember.

2025: five different clubs, five defeats

CSK won one of six home games in 2025 and lost five, the most home defeats CSK have suffered in a single season at Chepauk. The previous worst was four, in 2008 and 2012. Five different clubs did it, and several of them had waited years:

• Royal Challengers Bengaluru, 28 March. A 50-run win, the biggest margin by which anyone has beaten CSK at Chepauk, and RCB's first win over CSK there since 2008. Seventeen years.
• Delhi Capitals, 5 April. A 25-run win, Delhi's first at Chepauk against CSK since 2010.
• Kolkata Knight Riders, 11 April. CSK were bowled out for 103, their lowest total in a home defeat, and KKR chased it down by eight wickets.
• Sunrisers Hyderabad, 25 April. CSK made 154; Hyderabad got there with five wickets in hand.
• Punjab Kings, 30 April. CSK made 190. Punjab chased 191 and won by four wickets.

The only home win that season came on opening weekend, against Mumbai. After that, the fort was open to everyone.

2026 was better on paper: four wins in seven. But Punjab, Gujarat and Hyderabad still won at Chepauk, and that matters for what comes next, because of how they won.

How they beat us

Of the 13 home defeats since 2023, ten came with the other side chasing. Only three (Rajasthan in 2023, Bengaluru and Delhi in 2025) were won by a side batting first. This is the chase era from earlier in this piece showing up in the results. Here is every one of them, newest first, with the match page for each:

Who has beaten CSK at Chepauk the most?

Now the question that started this section. I went through every CSK home game and counted, club by club, treating renamed franchises as one club (Kings XI Punjab and Punjab Kings, Delhi Daredevils and Delhi Capitals, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Bengaluru):

Punjab are the answer. They have beaten CSK at Chepauk six times in ten meetings, the only club with a better record there than CSK themselves (CSK are 4–6). One of those was the 2010 Super Over, after a tie. The other five were in 2012 and then the last four visits, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, and in each of those four Punjab were chasing: 201, 163, 191 and 210. A team coming to Chepauk, choosing to bowl, and finishing the job. Four times running.

Mumbai are the old rival with the long memory. Five wins for MI and five for CSK, the only other club to beat CSK five times at home. But their last win was in 2019, and it's a sore one: they beat CSK twice at Chepauk that season, including Qualifier 1, chasing 132 with six wickets to spare and a place in the final on the line. Since then CSK have not lost to Mumbai at home.

Kolkata have spoiled the party before. Four wins, including the one that hurts most: the 2012 final, played at Chepauk, when KKR chased 191 and won with five wickets in hand. They also won in 2023 and 2025.

Sunrisers' two wins have both come since 2025 (2025, 2026), and Gujarat's only win there was in 2026. Bengaluru have beaten CSK at Chepauk just twice in ten (2008 and 2025), Rajasthan twice in nine (2008 and 2023). The old opponents who used to come and lose have stopped doing that.

Who is thriving at Chepauk right now?

So who is succeeding here? Here are the leaders since 2023, phase by phase. I'll start with the batters, then the bowlers.

CSK's powerplay batting is in good shape: Ayush Mhatre, Sanju Samson and Rachin Ravindra all strike above 155 in the first six overs, and Ruturaj Gaikwad does so across a far larger sample (361 balls at 146).

The middle overs are a completely different picture. Even the fastest scorers there — Daryl Mitchell (148.5), Marcus Stoinis, Shreyas Iyer — are more than 20 points of strike rate below the powerplay leaders. Shivam Dube is the workhorse: 22 sixes in 239 balls of the middle overs at Chepauk, more than anyone else.

Finishing looks well covered: Gaikwad (177.8) and Dube (175.7) now lead the death-overs chart, with MS Dhoni at 167.3. That matters for what follows — CSK's batting problem is not at the end.

Now the bowlers. In the middle overs, the two most economical bowlers at Chepauk since 2023 played for the opposition:

Sunil Narine and Varun Chakaravarthy — two mystery spinners from KKR — went for 5.00 and 5.67 an over here. Ravindra Jadeja (6.68 over 361 balls) is remarkable in that company, and it's the sheer volume that makes him the most valuable CSK bowler of the era. But economy isn't the whole story. The bowlers who actually take wickets in these overs are:

Noor Ahmad is the standout, with 19 middle-overs wickets — but at 8.26 an over, he's expensive. Jadeja has 17 at 6.68. Put those together and you see the gap CSK have to close: a wicket-taker who also controls the run rate. And at the other end of the innings:

Matheesha Pathirana leads with 8.63 an over and 15 wickets in 162 balls of death bowling — far and away the best CSK option. After him, Mustafizur Rahman (9.75 over just 56 balls), Anshul Kamboj (9.77) and Tushar Deshpande (10.93) are all going for close to ten an over or more, at a ground where the death overs average 10.15.

And since spin is being hit harder, who can hit it?

Dube (155.1, with 21 sixes off 147 balls), Mitchell, Ravindra and Dewald Brevis all clear 148. At the other end, Ambati Rayudu (86.2), Faf du Plessis (90.2) and Ajinkya Rahane (102.7, against a rate of 148.8 versus pace) show what a batter who can't score against spin looks like at Chepauk. Dhoni's numbers are the most striking: 182.5 against pace, 106.3 against spin.

What should CSK look for? My take

Everything above was data. This section is opinion — informed by the data, but mine. Here's the ground CSK are playing on now:

• Par is 170–190, and it's harder to defend than it used to be.
• The side chasing wins about two times in three — and CSK's own record at home is 10–10 across the last three seasons.
• Powerplay and death overs are normal; the middle overs are still the slowest phase, but they no longer cost wickets.
• Spin is being hit — and our own spinners are among the ones being hit hardest.

There's a personnel story sitting underneath those numbers too. CSK's top order hasn't had a genuinely prolific season since 2023. Devon Conway's returns thinned before CSK moved on from him — a strike rate of 139.7 in 2023 down to 131.1 in a shortened 2025 (just 6 innings) — and Rachin Ravindra, tried as the answer in 2024–25, faded from 160.9 to 128.2 and wasn't part of the squad this year either. Last season, Sanju Samson (165.6), Ayush Mhatre (177.9) and Urvil Patel (201.6) all struck the ball well when they played — but none of them played close to a full season (14, 6 and 7 innings respectively), so that promise hasn't been tested over a full summer yet. Gaikwad played every game and captained the side, but at a strike rate of just 123.4 — and only 103.9 in the middle overs — he was, by some distance, the slowest of the group.

That points to a shopping list with three kinds of gaps.

Batting

1. A second Dube — a middle-overs spin-hitter. The middle overs are the weak link: Chepauk plays them at 7.96 an over against a league rate of 9.18, and CSK have been outscored in them at home (net −0.26). The bar I'd set is "strike rate of 145-plus against spin at Chepauk", and Dube, Mitchell, Ravindra and Brevis all clear it. I'd rather CSK add another of that type than another player who's a mismatch against spin in the middle overs.

There's a live version of this playing out already. Dube's own middle-overs workload at Chepauk shrank in 2026 — 36 balls faced there, down from 57–85 a season in 2023–25 — while Dewald Brevis (52 balls) and the uncapped Kartik Sharma (59 balls, striking at 130.5 against spin in his first season) both faced more overs 7–15 at Chepauk than Dube did. It's one season and small numbers on both sides, and Kartik Sharma has all of 11 IPL matches behind him, but if that split holds, CSK may already have found their second spin-hitter without an auction.

2. Six-hitting at the top. Sixes are unevenly spread in CSK's lineup. Over the last four seasons at Chepauk, Devon Conway hit four sixes in 318 balls (one every 80), Gaikwad one every 25, and Dube one every nine — the same spin-basher role that's made Dube CSK's leading six-hitter four seasons running. The rest of the IPL hits 18.6 sixes a match; Chepauk, 14.4 — sixes are harder to come by here, so the batters who can find them are worth more. The powerplay group — Ayush Mhatre (170.5), Sanju Samson (168.9) and, on a small sample, Urvil Patel (259.4 from just 32 balls) — all strike above 155 in the first six overs at Chepauk — a promising sign CSK are well on the way.

3. Finishing depth — the Dhoni-shaped gap. On the numbers alone this isn't a problem: Gaikwad and Dube both hit above 175 at the death here. But that's two names sharing a job MS Dhoni used to do alone, arriving with four or five balls left and the game still somehow under control. His own workload shows how long that had been fading before it disappeared: he faced 15.7 balls an innings in 2022, then just 4.8 in 2023 and 6.6 in 2024 — brief cameos, not full finishing spells — before a late uptick to 11.2 in 2025. Last season he was still named in the squad but didn't face a single ball anywhere, home or away. Dube is also now doubling up as the middle-overs spin-hitter above, which is exactly the kind of overlap that shows up badly the day it's needed in both places at once. The death-overs numbers hold up. The bench strength behind them doesn't.

Bowling

The bowling attack has lost more than the batting order has. Ravindra Jadeja, the man who used to control the middle overs, played the 2026 season for Rajasthan — and his own numbers at Chepauk had already been sliding before he left, from 5.92 an over in 2023 to 9.37 in a reduced 2025. Matheesha Pathirana, CSK's death-overs banker, wasn't part of the 2026 squad either, and his economy at Chepauk had drifted from 8.00 (2023) to 9.57 (2025) even before he went. Two bowlers who used to anchor two different phases are both gone at once.

The seam attack turned over just as completely. Tushar Deshpande, Deepak Chahar and Shardul Thakur — who split the powerplay and death overs between them through 2023–24 — are all gone. In have come Khaleel Ahmed, Gurjapneet Singh, Mukesh Choudhary and Nathan Ellis, and it hasn't settled yet. Ellis never bowled a ball for CSK this year — ruled out of the whole 2026 season with a hamstring injury before it started. Across the league in 2026, the two who've carried the heaviest pace workload have also been the least economical: Anshul Kamboj (10.43 an over in the powerplay, 11.2 at the death — both worse than the league averages of 10.1 and 10.79) and Matt Henry (13.00 an over from just three powerplay appearances). Mukesh Choudhary (8.61), Khaleel Ahmed (7.85) and Gurjapneet Singh (7.00) have all bowled cheaper powerplay overs than either of them — just far less often. The real find there has been Akeal Hosein — a spinner, opening the bowling — at 8.45 an over from 66 balls, cheaper than every seamer CSK have tried in the powerplay this year.

4. A wicket-taking wrist or mystery spinner for overs 7–15. Still my single biggest recommendation. Noor Ahmad takes the wickets (13–15 a season for CSK) but at a cost — 8.12 to 8.37 an over, nowhere near the 5.00 to 5.67 Narine and Varun manage at Chepauk. Maheesh Theekshana remains the cautionary tale on the other side of that trade-off: economical here (6.95 in the middle overs) but with only three middle-overs wickets in 114 balls. Control without penetration doesn't change games any more, and right now CSK have plenty of the first and not enough of the second.

The one genuinely encouraging sign has come from an unlikely direction. Jamie Overton — a seamer, hitting the deck hard rather than trying to spin it — has been CSK's best middle-overs bowler at Chepauk this year: 6.78 an over and 5 wickets from just 54 balls, cheaper than anyone else CSK have used there, spinner or seamer. It holds up beyond one ground too: his middle-overs economy across the whole 2026 season is 7.81 from 96 balls with 9 wickets, well under the league average of 9.31. It's a single season from a bowler CSK signed as an all-rounder, not a spinner, but if Overton keeps doing this, the actual fix for overs 7–15 might turn out to be pace rather than a second spinner.

5. Death-overs pace that can defend 180. With chasing favoured and par at 170–190, holding a total means having two dependable death bowlers, not one — and CSK are currently down to zero. Anshul Kamboj has bowled the most death overs at Chepauk this year (70 balls) but at 9.77 an over, and Jamie Overton is next at 8.86 from a smaller sample. Both are further off the mark than even Pathirana was in his last, declining season.

6. Powerplay pace that takes wickets. Deepak Chahar, who had 13 powerplay wickets at Chepauk since 2023, wasn't retained past 2024. Kamboj is again the closest thing CSK have now — 78 balls at 8.62 an over with four wickets — with Khaleel Ahmed similarly serviceable (8.88, two wickets in a smaller sample). Nobody has replaced Chahar's strike rate yet, and Kamboj carrying both the powerplay and the bulk of the death overs is its own kind of risk — one bowler covering two phases CSK used to split between specialists.

The two-way player

The question everyone asks is who can do both — bat and bowl. I looked at everyone in the IPL since 2023 who has faced at least 150 balls and bowled at least 150, and filtered for a strike rate of 135 or better with an economy of 9.0 or better.

The honest reading is that real two-way players are rare. Only six players clear both bars. Narine is the gold standard: a strike rate of 168.8, an economy of 7.39, and in the middle overs he bats at 185.8 and bowls at 7.22. He's also the bowler who went for just 5.00 an over in the middle overs at Chepauk. Behind him, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel are the closest to the spin all-rounder CSK need, and both bowl the middle overs at 8.0 or better. Jadeja batted only at 115.9 in the middle overs — and, played the 2026 season for Rajasthan.

Before shopping outside, it's worth asking whether CSK already have pieces they haven't finished building. Jamie Overton is the clearest case: the middle-overs bowling above, plus a batting strike rate of 158.1 (86 balls, 136 runs) this season, put him close to the two-way profile already — and he's on the roster now, not the auction list. Akeal Hosein bowled in half of CSK's matches this year but faced just 3 balls with the bat all season; whatever he could offer lower down the order hasn't really been tested. Prashant Veer is close to the mirror image — five innings of genuine finishing (67 balls, 90 runs, a strike rate of 134.3, including a 43 off 29) but only a single over bowled all year from a left-arm spinner. Two players with an unused half of their game, and one already showing both halves can work — that's worth figuring out before CSK go looking elsewhere.

So the shape of the player CSK are missing is: a left-arm or off-spinning all-rounder who bowls overs 7–15 for under 8 an over and bats at 140 or better. Axar Patel fits the numbers. Washington Sundar bowls the middle overs at 7.87 but is expensive overall. Krunal Pandya is economical but scores at just 128. I'm not telling CSK who to chase — the data can't tell me who's available or what they cost — but that's the profile.

The bottom line

Chepauk has changed less than the IPL around it — but by enough to matter. The old plan, of squeezing overs 7–15 with spin and defending a modest total, still works in our memories. It works a lot less often on the scorecard. The next great CSK side at home will look less like the old fortress and more like a team built to chase 190 — with wrist-spin that takes wickets, hitters who take on spin, and at least one player who can do both.

There's a reason to think CSK already see it. Zaheer Khan was appointed head coach for IPL 2027 with a reputation built on developing fast bowlers, not spinners, and CSK's own reporting on the hire noted an attack that had gone "tidy but toothless, short of wickets and undone by a hole at the death" — which is more or less what this piece has found: Chahar, Deshpande, Thakur and Pathirana all gone, Kamboj and Henry both bowling worse than the league average this year, and CSK's death-overs and powerplay options both short of what they used to have. Zaheer himself took 102 IPL wickets at an economy of 7.59 across 14 seasons, so he knows the job from the bowler's end too. If that specialism does what CSK hired him for, the gaps this piece keeps finding are the first place it should show up.

One caveat: the data shows that Chepauk has changed, not why. It has nothing on the pitch, dew, weather or team selection, so the reasons are for you and me to argue about.

The whistles at Chepauk never change. The game underneath them just did. Whistle podu! 🦁

Every table on this page is generated live from the CSK Den match database and updates as new matches are added. Explore more on the CSK stats page, or see the full CSK sixes records.