After making a poor start to the season, Mahendra Singh Dhoni enjoyed brought in Tyagi, Murali Vijay and Jakati in place of Parthiv Patel, Joginder Sharma and Manpreet Gony, as the Chennai side managed to turn things around. Buchanan, on the other hand, surprisingly left Wriddhiman Saha — fairly successful last year — on the bench even as the team struggled to put bat to ball at the start.

“I think the teams in this competition will win only if the domestic players of the side will perform or if you have a strong local squad to choose from because at the end of the day, there will be seven Indian players playing in the side at a given time,” TA Sekar of Delhi Daredevils said. Mumbai’s assistant coach Praveen Amre too, at the start of the tournament, mentioned that “domestic players will need to chip in substantially to help the side win games. The limelight might be on the foreign players, but the focus will remain on domestic players.”