IPL 2025, CSK vs SRH Live Updates: MS Dhoni set to play his 400th T20 with Chennai on the brink

CSK vs SRH IPL Live Updates 2025, Chennai Super Kings vs Sunrisers Hyderabad: MS Dhoni will be hoping that his 400th T20 appearance is marked with a win for CSK

IPL 2025 has just been a year that has not gone close to plan for either of these two teams. While SRH have suffered a massive decline after their record-breaking year in 2024, with all their main players struggling through a torrid patch of form at just the wrong time, CSK’s poor auction has been exacerbated by injury problems and a batting unit that just feels out of place in a 2025 cricket tournament. Both these teams sit on 4 points after 8 games, with two wins and six losses a piece. From this point forward in the season, it might be more about rescuing some goodwill and getting some wins on the board for the fans, as much as any other ambitions these teams might possess.

CSK have already entered something of a rebuilding stage, including young batters like Shaik Rasheed in their plans and giving a debut to 17-year-old Ayush Mhatre. Expect CSK to stick with this policy, as their senior batters really struggle for form and the remainder of the season provides a strong opportunity to blood the younger players in their squad. This is invaluable time for their younger players, under the captaincy of MS Dhoni, and establishing themselves as good options heading into the future for the franchise could prove to be a blessing in disguise for a team that has relied on age and experience, almost to a fault.

SRH are a strange team to figure out. There are some tactical questions that can be asked — Heinrich Klaasen has generally batted too low, with Nitish Kumar Reddy not in strong enough form to warrant batting higher than the South African, especially when the Indian all-rounder’s best contributions came lower down the order for SRH last year. But beyond that, it has just been a confusingly barren spell for SRH’s top order, perhaps best exemplified by Ishan Kishan’s bizarre dismissal in their second loss against MI. Kishan scored a century in his first innings for SRH, but after that, has only managed 33 runs in 7 innings. It’s a miserable run of form, and might be enough to prompt SRH to give a chance to Atharva Taide, or even the vastly experienced Sachin Baby on the back of a solid domestic campaign.

Losing today will essentially mean that the season is over for one of these teams with how competitive the top half of the table is, if it isn’t over already. There’s a general malaise that will be difficult to shrug off for either of these teams, but there remains plenty of firepower and quality in both of these squads to try and pull off a result that could spark a miraculous comeback. This isn’t a dead rubber match quite yet, and more than anything, the teams will need to put up the kind of fight that lives up to those expectations.