The CSK ‘Khan’undrum: Year One or Year Zero?

We finally have some clarity on the new Chennai Super Kings head coach. It’s Zaheer Khan.

But, for me, that isn’t actually the most intriguing part of the appointment.

The more interesting bit is the circumstances surrounding it.

Zaheer has been given a one-year deal, and that immediately caught my attention. This is CSK we are talking about. Stephen Fleming had been part of the franchise almost from the beginning — first as a player in the inaugural 2008 season and then as head coach from 2009 until 2026, as Reuters reported when his 18-year association ended. His association with CSK lasted 18 years.

So when CSK go from an 18-year coaching relationship to a one-year contract, I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask:

What exactly are they trying to do here?

And the more I thought about it, the more Zaheer actually started making sense.

Not necessarily as the person who is going to come in and suddenly “fix” CSK.

Perhaps as the person who helps CSK figure out what CSK needs to become next.

The problem isn’t really replacing Fleming

Replacing Stephen Fleming was never going to be straightforward.

For almost the entire existence of CSK, Fleming and MS Dhoni have been the two constants around which the cricketing side of the franchise was built. Fleming was there when Dhoni was captain in 2008, became head coach the following year, and stayed through the entire evolution of the franchise.

But I think there is another, slightly bigger problem sitting underneath all of this.

How do you move away from a system that was built around MS Dhoni?

Because CSK didn’t just have a successful captain. They had a captain whose particular strengths were so unusual that, over time, the franchise naturally developed around them.

Dhoni’s reading of the game. His decision-making. His understanding of individual players. His ability to trust instinct when others might look for more information.

You can build processes around those things.

You can build scouting systems. You can collect data. You can have analysts sitting in meetings.

But you can’t really manufacture Dhoni’s instinct.

And CSK have already had to confront the question of what happens when Dhoni isn’t the captain.

They tried it with Ravindra Jadeja in 2022, before Dhoni returned to the captaincy during that season. Then, in 2024, Ruturaj Gaikwad took over from Dhoni.

I’m not saying either transition was a failure. That’s too simplistic.

But they do show that moving away from Dhoni has never really been as simple as just handing someone else the captaincy.

And perhaps that’s because Dhoni himself was part of the system.

This reminds me of Manchester United

Sir Alex Ferguson on the touchline — the defining figure around whom an entire institution was built for 26 years.

As a Manchester United fan, I’ve thought about this quite a lot because there is a parallel that feels strangely familiar.

Sir Alex Ferguson wasn’t just Manchester United’s manager.

For 26 years, he was the central figure around which the entire football operation evolved. He changed his teams, rebuilt squads, adapted to different generations of players and found ways to stay relevant for an extraordinary length of time.

And when he finally left in 2013, United didn’t have a problem finding managers.

They had David Moyes.
Then Louis van Gaal.
Then José Mourinho.
Then Ole Gunnar Solskjær.

These were not random appointments. Some had won major trophies. Some had extraordinary reputations. Some had already demonstrated that they could manage at a very high level.

Yet none came close to reproducing the Ferguson era.

That’s an important distinction.

It isn’t that Ferguson failed to leave behind good people. In fact, an enormous number of players who worked under him eventually went into management. The Independent counted 29 former Ferguson players who had become managers by 2015, with very different levels of success among them.

But Ferguson’s greatest strengths weren’t necessarily things that could simply be passed on to the next person.

His ability to manage people.
His ability to read personalities.
His ability to reinvent himself.
His authority within the organisation.
His understanding of when to push someone, when to protect someone and when to completely change direction.

Those things were Ferguson.

And I think that’s an interesting way of looking at Dhoni too.

There are coaches and leaders whose philosophies can travel far beyond them. Their ideas become a system that other people can learn, adapt and eventually build upon.

But sometimes, a person’s biggest contribution to an organisation is so closely tied to the individual that replacing them becomes a completely different challenge.

That is where I think CSK find themselves now.

So where does Zaheer fit into this?

This is where the appointment starts becoming interesting for me.

Because Zaheer isn’t an obvious Fleming replacement.

He’s not coming in to simply recreate what Fleming did for 18 years.

And I don’t think CSK necessarily need that.

What they might need is someone who can help them bridge two different versions of the franchise.

The old CSK was built around experience, instinct, relationships and understanding the individual player.

Modern T20 cricket has become much more systematic.

Scouting is more structured. Player development is more deliberate. Auctions are increasingly about identifying specific skill sets and building a squad around a defined combination of roles. Data obviously plays a much bigger part.

The important thing is that these systems can be replicated.

They don’t have to depend entirely on one person’s instinct.

And Zaheer has spent time on both sides of that equation.

Zaheer has seen how a modern franchise is built

Zaheer Khan brings years of operational experience from the modern T20 franchise ecosystem.

I wouldn’t describe Zaheer as some analytics genius or suggest that he personally built Mumbai Indians’ scouting machine. That would be stretching what we actually know.

What he does have is familiarity with the processes that went into building one of the most sophisticated and successful T20 franchises around.

Zaheer joined Mumbai Indians as Director of Cricket Operations in 2018, becoming part of the team’s cricketing think-tank and joining the owners at the auction. In 2022, MI elevated him to Global Head of Cricket Development, with responsibility around player development and extending the franchise’s talent-identification and grooming philosophy across its growing global setup.

That’s important.

He has seen from the inside how a franchise tries to build something that doesn’t depend entirely on one or two superstars.

He has also spent time at another IPL franchise. Zaheer was a mentor with Lucknow Super Giants, giving him another perspective on how a franchise operates and how players are managed within that environment.

And then there’s Zaheer the player.

He was never really a finished product.

Even during his playing career, he kept evolving. The knuckleball is probably the most obvious example, but the larger point is that Zaheer was always someone who seemed interested in figuring out how to get better at the game rather than simply relying on what had already worked for him.

That, to me, is relevant to this particular job.

There is also the Dhoni factor

We now know that Dhoni was involved in the appointment.

CSK managing director Kasi Viswanathan has confirmed that Dhoni suggested Zaheer’s name, with the cricket management team agreeing that he fit what they were looking for.

The Times of India also reported that Dhoni’s comfort level with Zaheer was one of the key factors in the decision.

And this is where I think the relationship between the two matters.

As Ashwin mentioned on his YouTube channel while talking about Zaheer’s appointment, there is already a rapport between Zaheer and Dhoni from their playing days. Zaheer was a senior player when Dhoni was captain. And I think that matters because it isn’t just about having someone who can offer a different point of view — it’s about having someone who understands how Dhoni thinks, knows him well enough to challenge him, and has the history to have those conversations naturally.

That last bit is important.

I’m not suggesting nobody else at CSK can disagree with Dhoni.

Quite the opposite.

But there is a difference between having a different opinion and having a long-standing relationship with someone where those conversations have already happened in another context — when both of you were players, when one was captain and the other was a senior member of the team.

Zaheer isn’t an outsider suddenly walking into the Dhoni ecosystem.

He already knows it.

And Dhoni already knows him.

Which brings me back to the one-year contract

This is probably the part of the whole appointment that interests me the most.

According to a Times of India report, CSK were insisting on a year-by-year model for the head coach, while some of the other candidates wanted at least two years. The report said contract duration was a sticking point in discussions with Hemang Badani and other candidates.

That changes the way I look at the appointment.

Because the question isn’t really:

“Why did Zaheer only get one year?”

It is:

“Why did CSK want only one year from their next coach?”

And I don’t think we have the answer to that yet.

Maybe it is simply because CSK don’t want to commit long-term until they see how the post-Fleming setup works.

Maybe it is because the franchise is entering another phase of squad construction and doesn’t want to lock itself into a coaching structure before it knows what that squad looks like.

Or maybe — and this is where I’m speculating — CSK see IPL 2027 as a transition year.

A year where they work out what parts of the old CSK identity they want to retain, what needs to change, and what the franchise should look like once the Dhoni era finally comes to an end.

If that is the thinking, then a one-year appointment makes a lot more sense.

Maybe Zaheer isn’t the destination

This is the theory I keep coming back to.

I don’t think Zaheer’s job is necessarily to become the next Stephen Fleming.

I think there is a possibility that his job is to help CSK move from Stephen Fleming and MS Dhoni’s CSK to whatever the next version of CSK is going to be.

That requires someone who understands the old system.

But it also requires someone who has seen how modern franchise cricket works.

Someone who understands players because he was one.

Someone who has spent time around franchise decision-making.

Someone who has worked in player development.

And, perhaps most importantly, someone who already has a relationship with the person who has been at the centre of CSK for so long.

That is where Zaheer’s appointment starts making sense to me.

Not because I think he is some obvious, perfect answer.

I don’t think there is an obvious answer to replacing what CSK had with Fleming and Dhoni.

But perhaps CSK aren’t actually trying to replace it.

Perhaps they are trying to evolve it.

And if that’s the experiment — to use Zaheer as the bridge between the CSK that we know and the CSK that eventually has to exist without Dhoni at its centre — then the one-year contract suddenly becomes a lot more interesting.

Because maybe this isn’t really about deciding whether Zaheer is the long-term answer.

Maybe the year is about figuring out what the long-term question should even be.