Shane Watson had an incredible run in international cricket and also in the IPL. During his IPL career, he played for several franchises and won titles for Rajasthan Royals (RR) and Chennai Super Kings (CSK). Watson, who ended with 3,874 runs and 92 wickets in the IPL played for the MS Dhoni-led CSK franchise in his last three years, from 2018-2020. Watson recalled his CSK days and reminisced a funny incident involving Dhoni.
Speaking on #TheInsiders on JioCinema, Watson revealed, “I remember the first time that I played at CSK and one of the first things MS Dhoni said to the whole group was ‘Whatever we do, we want to win the FairPlay award but now that we’ve got you Watson (Shane Watson) the chance of us winning that has significantly reduced.’ And then, that great man ended up walking onto the field in one game and I was like well….Maybe not!”
The incident Watson was talking about was when Dhoni walked onto the field during CSK’s away game versus Rajasthan Royals (RR), at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium in Jaipur during IPL 2019. Chasing 152, Chennai were left with 8 to get off the last two deliveries when the penultimate ball, bowled by Ben Stokes, was a slower full toss above waist height as Mitchell Santner-Ravindra Jadeja ran two and the leg umpire signalled it a no-ball. There was a lot of chaos and drama regarding it being a legitimate delivery or not and just then, Dhoni stormed onto the field to have a heated argument with the umpires. Eventually, it wasn’t deemed a no-ball but Santer-Jadeja did the job for CSK with a last-ball six.
Dhoni’s reappearance on the field surprised and stunned many, being a huge talking point during the 2019 edition. Dhoni-led CSK went onto play the final of the season, where they lost to Mumbai Indians (MI) by a run. Talking about Watson, he won the IPL title during his first year with CSK (in 2018). In the inaugural edition, in 2008, he was part of the Shane Warne-led RR franchise’s victorious run, also winning the Player-of-the-Tournament award.