Chennai Super Kings will wait for skipper MS Dhoni to return to India before the franchise celebrates winning the fourth Indian Premier League title. CSK beat Kolkata Knight Riders by 27 runs on Friday at the Dubai International Stadium, but the party will happen after Dhoni is done mentoring the Indian team for the upcoming T20 World Cup in UAE and Oman.

Speaking to ANI, CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan said there can be no celebration without the skipper. “We shall wait for the skipper to return to India. We shall happily wait as there can be no celebration without MS. He has already switched caps from CSK skipper to Team India mentor, so we shall have a small get together once he returns to India after the T20 World Cup,” he said.

CSK redeemed itself after a dismal performance last year to clinch the IPL 2021 title but head coach Stephen Fleming still rates the 2018 final win as special and termed it “very emotional”. The former New Zealand skipper said he is very proud to have won the IPL 2021 final since many pundits had written off CSK due to the absence of young blood in the side.

“It’s very hard to rate them, they (IPL wins) all are specials as they are results of our hard work. I think the one coming back in 2018 was very emotional but there is a lot of hard work in this one too,” Fleming said during the post-match press conference. “If you look back when we were called Dad’s Army in the first year (2018), I think a lot of people had no hope from us to maintain the competitiveness during this cycle.”

For IPL 2022, two new teams are set to come in, and it needs to be seen how many players a franchise is allowed to retain before the mega auction. Fleming knows it will be difficult to retain most CSK players and he is looking forward to see how things pan out ahead of the IPL 2022.

“We don’t know (on being asked if this was an end of an era). But we know that whenever we get to the end of the cycle we know that we cannot get some players back,” said Fleming.

“CSK always had a system where we maintain players and keep them with you for a long period of time and get the best out of them. It will be interesting to see how things pan out in the next few months. Most teams will have a change in them and we will be one of them,” he added.