Former BCCI President N Srinivasan who is also the Managing Director of India Cement, the entity that owns Chennai Super Kings has recalled an incident when Mahendra Singh Dhoni refused a take an ‘outstanding player’ who was offered to him.

“There was one outstanding player that we suggested to MS, he said: ‘no sir, he will spoil the team’. The cohesion within the team is important and see in America, franchise-based sport has been there for such a long time,” Srinivasan said at the webinar organised by the Great Lakes Institute of Management according to ESPNcricinfo.

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“In India, we’re just starting and we’re new to it. But we at India Cements have had a lot of experience running teams at junior levels,” he added.

The CSK owner also revealed how Dhoni has retained faith in his instincts despite a lot of data available to him in the last few years.

“We’re awash with data just now. To give you an example, there are bowling coaches and in a T20 game, they play videos of every batsman whom they’re going to come against and they see how he got out, what’s his strength, what’s his weakness etc. So, MS Dhoni doesn’t attend this, he’s a pure instinct man. The bowling coach, (head coach Stephen) Fleming will be there and everybody will be there, everyone is giving opinions, (but) he’ll get up and go,” Srinivasan said.

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“In the context of instinct, he feels that okay he can assess a batsman or player on the field, that’s his judgment. On the other hand, there is so much data that is available to help a person also analyse. It’s a very difficult line to draw (between data and instinct),” Srinivasan added.

Dhoni has remained away from cricket since the 2019 ICC World Cup semi-final loss to New Zealand. However, he is set to return to action with CSK in IPL 2020 that is set to begin in the UAE on September 19.