‘Both teams have shown a stubbornness to change the batting order’- Sunil Gavaskar on MI, CSK’s struggles in IPL 2025

The 2025 season has been awful for the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Mumbai Indians (MI). Sunil Gavaskar, a former opener for India, gave his thoughts on the two teams and the reasons behind their poor IPL 2025 performances.

Given that both CSK and MI are the most successful clubs in the tournament with a combined total of ten titles, the fact that they are currently at the bottom of the table and seventh, respectively, has greatly startled the fans. According to former 1983 World Champion Sunil Gavaskar, the reason for these lacklustre performances is both teams’ reluctance to alter their batting order, which brings up the problems with Tilak Verma in the blue and Ruturaj Gaikwad in the yellow.

“Both sides have demonstrated a refusal to alter their batting order when it isn’t generating runs for them. Prior to his unlucky injury, Ruturaj Gaikwad, who has established himself as an opener with a tonne of runs, dropped to bat at the fall of the first wicket. Now, unless he is in poor form and the other openers are batting brilliantly and are in far better form than he is, why would a captain do that? That isn’t the case, therefore every time he batted, the Chennai team had already lost a wicket in the Powerplay, so he had to exercise caution. As a result, there would be a lot of dot balls,” Gavaskar said in his Mid Day column.

In a similar vein, it is perplexing why the Mumbai squad is reluctant to deploy Tilak Varma at number three despite his excellent record for India at that position. An Indian who has performed well at that number should be assigned there rather than being dropped down the order because it is difficult for an overseas batter to adjust to Indian pitches right away, no matter how talented he is. There are still enough of matches to win and go up the ladder because the tournament is still more than half over, Gavaskar continued.

Chennai and Mumbai have failed to demonstrate quick decision-making: Sunil Gavaskar

Sunil Gavaskar went on to mention the period in which the Mumbai team was able to recover from a poor start and disclosed that this skill has not been observed in recent years. He said that T20 cricket requires quick decisions, something neither team has demonstrated this year.

At one point, Mumbai supporters didn’t care too much if their side got off to a bad start since they knew they would rally in the second half. Nevertheless, the past few years have demonstrated that the bounceability has changed. The former legend-turned-commentator came to the conclusion that neither Chennai nor Mumbai had yet demonstrated the lightning-fast thinking and lightning-fast decision-making required for T20 cricket.