IPL 2022: All the instances when captains were changed in mid-season

The Indian Premier League is one of the high-pressure sporting events around the globe right now. The pressure of running an IPL team can be so huge. Since its inception in 2008, IPL has seen many teams changing their captains midway through the season to change their fortunes or due to injuries. Last night saw one such incident where the most successful team in the history of the IPL, Chennai Super Kings handed over the captaincy back to their former captain MS Dhoni from their current skipper Ravindra Jadeja. What are the other instances where such an event happened? Let’s find out.

Jadeja resigns, MS Dhoni to lead CSK again

In a shocking turn of events, Chennai Super Kings on Saturday announced that their current skipper Ravindra Jadeja is relinquishing himself the captaincy duties to focus more on his batting and bowling. It also mentioned that their former captain and one of the most successful leaders in the history of the game, MS Dhoni will once again take back that position for the greater good of the team.

“Ravindra Jadeja has decided to relinquish captaincy to focus and concentrate more on his game and has requested MS Dhoni to lead CSK. MS Dhoni has accepted to lead CSK in the larger interest and to allow Jadeja to focus on his game,” said an official statement released by the CSK franchise.

In the 8 matches he played so far in IPL 2022, Jadeja has scored just 112 runs at a strike rate of 121.74 and has picked up only 5 wickets at an economy of 8.19.

Former mid-season captaincy changes

While this is the first time in the history of the IPL that the captaincy is given back to the person who did it before. It is certainly not the first time that the captaincy is changed mid-way through the season. In fact, such an instance almost happens every season or the other. Starting with the Laxman-Gilchrist transition for Deccan Chargers in 2008 to the Warner-Kane change in 2021 for SRH, this has been happening for quite some time in the IPL. The most famous of this mid-season captaincy change happened in 2013 when Ricky Ponting decided to hand over the captaincy to Rohit Sharma, as he was feeling he was wasting one of the overseas slots for himself due to his lack of form. That in fact turned out to be the turning point for Mumbai Indians as they went on to win the cup that season and even repeated that feat for another 4 years after that. More such instances that happened in the IPL are mentioned below:

2008: VVS Laxman -> Adam Gilchrist (Deccan Chargers)
2009: Kevin Pieterson -> Anil Kumble (RCB)
2012: Daniel Vettori-> Virat Kohli (RCB), Kumar Sangakara -> Cameron White (Deccan Chargers)
2013: Ricky Ponting->Rohit Sharma (MI), Angelo Mathews->Aaron Finch (PWI), Shikhar Dhawan-> Darren Sammy (SRH)
2015: Shane Watson-> Steve Smith (RR)
2016: David Miller-> Murali Vijay (KXIP)
2018: Gautam Gambhir-> Shreyas Iyer (Delhi Capitals)
2019: Ajinkya Rahane-> Steve Smith (RR)
2020: Dinesh Karthik -> Eoin Morgan (KKR)
2021: David Warner-> Kane Williamson (SRH)
2022: Ravindra Jadeja->MS Dhoni (CSK)