Former England all-rounder Moeen Ali has revealed that the former legendary Chennai Super Kings (CSK) skipper MS Dhoni insisted that the players have batting meetings only during the net sessions.
Moeen Ali, who played for CSK from 2021 to 2024, spoke about the CSK team’s culture during his interaction with the Super Over YouTube channel. Notably, CSK won the IPL titles in 2021 and 2023 when Moeen was part of the side.
“CSK had a great blend of more experienced players and less youngsters. There weren’t so many meetings. MS Dhoni used to say batting meetings should be done in practice. He used to say that when the whole team was practicing in the nets, that’s when the batters should be talking to each other. That made sense because when you get the batters back in the room, no one is listening or focused,” Moeen Ali said.
Further, Moeen shared the captaincy lessons he learnt from Dhoni, which propelled him to lead the Antigua and Barbuda Falcons to the CPL 2026 title win in its third season.
“I learnt a lot from MS about the importance of having lesser good players but getting everyone on the same page. The other thing I learnt from him is you have six bowlers generally in T20s, and it’s not about whom to bowl; it’s about who not to bowl. That changed my whole mindset on captaincy,” he added.
“So it’s about taking pressure off you as captain by identifying the bowlers who can’t bowl in certain situations. That mindset takes away the pressure of you making a mistake. You simplify things that way by identifying situations for different bowlers and then go with your gut feel, which MS was amazing at,” he concluded.
