Chennai Super Kings crushed Kings XI Punjab by nine wickets to end their worst Indian Premier League (IPL) season on a positive note. In the post-match presentation, MS Dhoni said that the Chennai Super Kings’ (CSK) “core group” of players is set for an overhaul. A league-stage exit is a first for the three-time champions and one of IPL’s most successful franchises.

“We need to slightly change our core group and look for the next 10 years,” PTI quoted Dhoni as saying.

“At the start of the IPL, we made a team and it served well. There comes a time where you have to shift a bit, hand it over to the next generation.” Dhoni, 39, vowed that his team will come back strongly in the next season.

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Coming back to the campaign, he acknowledged that it was a very difficult one with the team losing eight of their 14 matches.

“It was a difficult campaign. We committed a lot of errors. The last four games were a template of where we would like to be.

Dhoni accepted that team didn’t play to its full potential.

“I don’t think we played to the full potential. If you are lagging too much, it becomes very difficult to push yourself and come up with performances. Very proud of the way they played their cricket. It would have been very tough 6-7 games.

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“You won’t want to be in a dressing room that is not really enjoying cricket. You want to keep coming up with different ideas but if the dressing room atmosphere is not happy, it becomes very tough.

“A lot depends on what the BCCI decides upon the auction. This has been a tough year. This is one of the seasons where most of the teams played well.”