MS Dhoni of the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Sanju Samson of the Rajasthan Royals (RR) performed a promotional campaign for the IPL 2025 prior to its commencement. They spoke about the generational change in the league with the entry of Vaibhav Suryavanshi, now 14 years old, who wasn’t even alive when Dhoni took home his maiden IPL championship.

The goal of the ad film was to depict how the league pitted an RR squad, which was brimming with talented young players, against the conventional CSK parent army. Given that CSK is ranked tenth and RR is ranked ninth due to a higher net run rate, it is evident that both of those schools of thinking were equally unsuccessful as the teams prepare to face off in Match 62 at the Arun Jaitley Stadium.

All of RR’s shortcomings were exposed during their most recent game in the capital, against the Delhi Capitals. The batting group missed a winning position to enter the Super-Over during the chase, despite the bowlers’ good work keeping DC down to 188. Shimron Hetmyer and Riyan Parag, who were in bad form, came out to bat and managed an easily chased 11 runs without even finishing the six balls due to the RR management’s lack of discernment.

The franchise, which was still dealing with the loss of Samson, its most seasoned and strategically adept captain, continued to suffer from the same pattern of close, end-game defeats. The absence of the released Jos Buttler and the struggling middle-order combination of Hetmyer, Parag, and Dhruv Jurel has overshadowed the brilliance of Yashasvi Jaiswal, 14-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi, and a few others.

RR’s aspirations now rest on these young people gaining more experience and doing better the next year.

We’ve observed some skills. Jaiswal, Vaibhav, and Dhruv Jurel’s batting is still used today. Sanju, Riyan is quite prevalent nowadays. Many of our Indian batters are young and talented. In the press conference after the defeat against Punjab Kings, coach Rahul Dravid said, “They’ll be even better in a year.” Like the India U19, Vaibhav will play a lot of cricket. Additionally, Riyan Parag will play a lot of cricket. All of these guys, in my opinion, will play a significant amount of challenging and international cricket for India all year long. Hopefully, they will have more experience when they return here the next year. He went on to say, “They are already very talented players.”

CSK realized halfway through that they were too far on the other end of the spectrum, while RR must have realized that the IPL is not the English Premier League, where investing heavily in youth can help you build a dynasty (because there are no contracts here and no loyalty, but completely different concepts of mega and mini auctions).

The five-time champions defeated the Mumbai Indians at home in their first game, but they had to wait until their chances of making the playoffs were almost gone to win two more. Both coach Stephen Fleming and Dhoni, who took over as captain when Ruturaj Gaikwad was injured, have begun to publicly proclaim that their attention was on preparing for the next season even while they were mathematically alive.

The team then took it more literally than others, taking advantage of the IPL’s loophole to acquire young players to replace their even somewhat injured players and obtaining the rights to keep them for the next season. With players like Dewald Brevis, Ayush Mhatre, and Urvil Patel all starting right away and giving them a much greater chance for the next campaign, they are now a considerably younger squad than they were before the auction.

These young players will dictate the game, as neither team cares about points or NRR anymore. CSK would feel victorious if they could find another match-winner for the next season, while RR will win if their players get some vital experience since the demands of the IPL are not all that different from those of international cricket.