Chennai’s yellow army is bleeding, and Suresh Raina isn’t holding back. The former Chennai Super Kings star tore into the franchise’s management on April 26, pinning their dismal IPL 2025 campaign on a botched auction strategy. “MS Dhoni aisa auction nahi kar sakta tha,” Raina said, his words slicing through the air like a well-timed cover drive. He’s not wrong—CSK, once the IPL’s gold standard, is scraping the bottom of the points table, and fans are reeling.
The trouble brewed long before the season’s first ball. At the IPL 2025 auction, CSK’s picks raised eyebrows. The team splurged on untested names while letting proven performers slip away. Raina, speaking on a Star Sports broadcast, pointed to Dhoni’s reduced role in decision-making as the root of the mess. The legendary captain, known for his Midas touch in auctions, wasn’t steering the ship this time. The result? A squad that looks like a puzzle with half the pieces missing.
CSK’s latest humiliation came against Sunrisers Hyderabad on April 25. Chasing a modest 155, Hyderabad cruised home, thanks to Ishan Kishan’s 44 and Kamindu Mendis’s unbeaten 32. CSK’s bowlers, led by Harshal Patel’s 4-28 and Pat Cummins’s 2-21, had earlier choked Chennai to 154. Dewald Brevis, a debutant, scratched out 42, but the rest of the batting crumbled. Shaik Rasheed, Sam Curran, and Ayush Mahtre fell like dominoes, leaving CSK’s dugout grim-faced. It was their seventh loss, a death knell for playoff hopes.
Raina didn’t stop at the auction. He called out the team’s lack of fire, a far cry from the CSK of old. “The way he walked off after the toss and post-match, a big meeting is surely on the cards,” he said, hinting at Dhoni’s frustration. The captain’s cool, usually unshakable, is cracking. After the Hyderabad loss, Dhoni was blunt, saying the team can’t keep making the same mistakes. It’s a rare flash of anger from a man who’s seen it all.
The numbers don’t lie. CSK, with five IPL titles, is dead last in 2025. Their batting, once a fortress, is a house of cards. The auction missteps—overpaying for unproven talent, ignoring balance—have left them exposed. Raina’s outburst echoes what fans have whispered for weeks: this isn’t the CSK they know.
Chennai Super Kings lost to Sunrisers Hyderabad by six wickets on April 25, 2025, at Chepauk. CSK scored 154 in their innings, with Dewald Brevis top-scoring at 42. Harshal Patel took 4 wickets for 28 runs for Hyderabad. Ishan Kishan scored 44, and Kamindu Mendis was not out at 32 for Sunrisers. CSK has seven losses in IPL 2025 and is last on the points table.