MS Dhoni has been at every CSK training session this IPL 2026 season. He has not been at a single match. Now, for the first time, CSK’s batting coach Michael Hussey has explained exactly why — and it was Dhoni’s own call.
“He’s such a team-orientated guy,” Hussey said on Friday ahead of CSK’s clash against Mumbai Indians. “He always wants what’s best for the team and he was worried that if he came there’d be a bit too much of a distraction. Obviously the cameras would be on him a lot. The crowd would be cheering for him and things like that. And he really wanted the team to just be able to go about their job, do our thing.”
Hussey was clear that the decision was not made by the management. It was Dhoni himself who chose to stay away on match days — watching from home while attending pre-match net sessions every day. “That’s the thinking behind Dhoni not wanting to come to the matches,” Hussey added. “Whether that’s right or wrong, that’s not my decision to sort of make.”
It is a remarkably selfless call from a man who could walk into any IPL ground in any city and guarantee a standing ovation. Instead, Dhoni decided that his presence at matches — even as a non-playing squad member recovering from injury — would generate enough camera time and crowd energy to shift the team’s focus away from the game itself. So he stayed home.
Hussey made clear he personally wishes Dhoni were there. “I personally love having him around the dressing room. He offers so much wisdom. He offers so much confidence to the rest of the guys. So he’s obviously at training all the time and always a bubbly personality around training and offers a lot of his experience to the players there.”
The return timeline
The bigger question — and the one every cricket fan in India wants answered — is when Dhoni will actually play. Hussey suggested the wait may be almost over.
“I don’t know if it’s tomorrow or maybe the next match after that but he’s progressing really well,” he said. “I know he’s been upping his running speeds and that was probably the sticking point. I think we’re very confident from a skill perspective with his batting and his wicketkeeping. But it was just making sure that he could maintain good running power particularly towards the back end of an innings where he’s going to have to scamper those ones and twos.”
The calf injury that has kept Dhoni out is essentially a fitness threshold issue rather than a skills question — Hussey confirmed CSK are satisfied with his batting and keeping. It is purely the running between the wickets and the explosive sprinting required at the death that needed to reach a specific threshold before clearance. “As soon as he’s got the confidence in his calf then I’m sure he’ll give it the tick to be ready to go. And so we’re kind of guided by him at the moment.”
Hussey ended with a line that captured the national mood precisely: “I think all of Chennai’s waiting. All the fans are waiting and hoping.”
The impact player puzzle
Hussey also acknowledged CSK have been getting the impact player substitution wrong in some matches this season, with early-innings deployments backfiring and potentially unsettling the batting order. He hinted the team is moving toward a simpler approach — keeping the XI stable and using the impact player toward the back end of the innings rather than as a tactical mid-innings disruption — a shift that would bring more stability to players like Brevis and Dube who have been affected by the uncertainty.