Chennai Super Kings' biggest strength has become its biggest weakness, tough competition with Lucknow at Ekana

There has been a lot of pressure on Chennai Super Kings (CSK) ever since they lost five matches in a row in IPL 2025 and now there is a match against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), who have achieved a hat-trick of victories. The confidence of LSG will be high for this game to be played at Lucknow because they won both of their last two matches at home. Nicholas Pooran is playing out of his skin currently and is leading the highest scorer's list for this entire tournament. His aggressive batting has made him the biggest challenge for other teams.

Nonetheless, Nicholas Pooran's record against Chennai Super Kings (CSK) is not consistently impressive. R Ashwin, Noor Ahmed, and Mathisha Pathirana are those bowlers who have troubled Nicholas Pooran time and again in T20. Pooran scored just 40 runs in a total of eight innings against Ashwin and got out three times. His average has been 13.3 and strike rate 93. On the other hand, his record against Noor is even worse. Only 13 runs in five innings, dismissed twice, average 6.5, and strike rate just 50. Talking about Pathirana, he has dismissed Pooran four times in five innings, in which Pooran has scored only 25 runs.

Digvesh Rathi has bowled brilliantly so far in IPL 2025. In six matches, he has taken eight wickets while bowling 24 overs. His bowling average has been 23.1, economy 7.7, and strike rate 18.0, which are considered excellent in terms of T20 format. Rathi's biggest strength has been his control. His control is 76.4%, which shows that he is consistently bowling on the right line length and is not allowing the batsmen to play freely.

CSK's start in this IPL has not been very good. Their run rate in the powerplay has been the lowest at 7.5, while the run rate of all the other teams is above eight. Not only slow play, but CSK is also losing wickets in this phase. They are at number three in terms of average runs per wicket, which shows that neither runs are being scored nor wickets are being saved. Another matter of concern for CSK is that their middle-order batting is also struggling. The team is not able to score runs quickly even between the 7th and 16th overs of the match. In this phase, CSK has hit the least (only 14 sixes) so far and has played the most balls for every boundary, which shows the weakness of their strike rotation and finishing.

CSK has been the weakest team in terms of batting against spin this season. They have lost six wickets more against spin bowlers than any other team. Their strike rate is also only 119 against spin, which is the lowest in the league. In the entire batting unit, only three batsmen Rachin Ravindra, Shivam Dubey, and Vijay Shankar have a strike rate slightly above 130. The strike rate of all the other batsmen is below 110, which clearly shows that CSK's batting looks very uncomfortable against teams with spin attacks.