2008 Chennai Super Kings season

Mahendra Singh Dhoni and coached by Kepler Wessels. They finished runners-up in the IPL after losing the finals to the Rajasthan Royals by 3 wickets. They qualified for the 2008 Champions League Twenty20 but the tournament was cancelled due to 2008 Mumbai attacks

M.S. Dhoni, Matthew Hayden, Stephen Fleming, Muttiah Muralitharan and Michael Hussey. Dhoni became the costliest player of the auction, as the Chennai franchise bought him for $1.5 million.^[1] They also bought Indian players such as Suresh Raina, Parthiv Patel, Lakshmipathy Balaji and Joginder Sharma and foreign players like Makhaya Ntini, Albie Morkel and Jacob Oram. Apart from these they signed several Indian domestic players like Subramaniam Badrinath, Manpreet Gony, Ravichandran Ashwin, Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan, Anirudha Srikkanth, Sudeep Tyagi, Shadab Jakati and Abhinav Mukund

Man of the match award for his 4/32 in 4 overs. The Super Kings were unable to chase down a modest total of 127 despite being 60/0 at one stage and suffered a shock defeat at the hands of Royal Challengers Bangalore. In another home game, against Rajasthan Royals, CSK went down by 10 runs chasing 212. Albie Morkel's all-round efforts (2/35 in 4 overs and 71 off 40 balls) went in vain as the Super Kings succumbed to a second straight defeat. In their last league fixture, the Super Kings could easily beat the struggling Deccan Chargers by 7 wickets, with Raina scoring an unbeaten half-century. The Super Kings managed to get a semi-final spot with this win as they finished in third place in the league table with 16 points.^[3]

Kings XI Punjab, whom they managed to defeat by 9 wickets, thus entering the final. Electing to bat first, Kings XI scored only 112/8 in their 20 overs as Chennai bowlers dented the innings with wickets at regular intervals. Suresh Raina and Parthiv Patel scored unbeaten fifties and took the team to victory with more than five overs to spare.^[4] The Chennai outfit faced the resurgent Rajasthan Royals in the final which was played at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai. Batting first, Chennai made a decent total, 163/5, in their 20 overs, with Raina top-scoring with 43 and Parthiv Patel also contributing 38 runs. Rajasthan's run-chase was in trouble at one stage, with the scoreboard reading 42/3 in the seventh over. However, Rajasthan's all-rounder Shane Watson added 57 runs for the fourth wicket with Yusuf Pathan, who went on to score 56 off just 39 balls. With 8 required off the last over for the Royals with 3 wickets in hand, the match went down to the last ball, off which Sohail Tanvir scored a single to give his side the victory.^[5]

2008 Mumbai Attacks and Chennai Super Kings, along with Rajasthan Royals