Chennai Super Kings (CSK) is a franchise cricket team based in Chennai, India, which plays in the Indian Premier League (IPL). They were one of the eight teams that took part in the 2008 Indian Premier League which was the inaugural season of the IPL. They were captained by 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.
Pre-season player signings
During the first player auctions for the inaugural IPL season, conducted in January 2008, the Chennai team bought a number of contemporary star cricketers such as 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. 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.
Squad
Players with international caps before the start of the 2008 IPL season are listed in bold.
Indian Premier League
The Super Kings won their first game against Kings XI Punjab by 33 runs, after scoring 240/5 which was the highest total of the tournament, a record surpassed by themselves in 2010 by scoring 246 runs. Chennai also managed to win a close match against Mumbai Indians by 6 runs despite Mumbai batsman Abhishek Nayar scoring an unbeaten 45. Then they went on to beat Kolkata Knight Riders comfortably by 9 wickets and Royal Challengers Bangalore by 13 runs in their next two games. But their winning run in the tournament took a hit when their overseas stars Matthew Hayden, Michael Hussey and Jacob Oram had to leave for national duties. Their departure immediately affected their performance as they lost their next three games. The batting, although inconsistent, eventually adjusted to the losses of Hayden and Hussey with contributions from Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Suresh Raina and Albie Morkel. In the home game against Delhi Daredevils, CSK were unable to defend a target of 170 due to half-centuries by Delhi openers Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir. At Jaipur against the home team Rajasthan Royals, the Super Kings batsmen struggled against Pakistani fast-bowler Sohail Tanvir who picked up the best bowling figures in the IPL 2008 (6/14). This was also the best bowling figures in a Twenty20 match until 2011, when Somerset spinner Arul Suppiah took figures of 6 for 5 against Glamorgan. CSK lost another home game to Deccan Chargers which was only the second victory for the latter in the tournament. Chennai beat Delhi Daredevils in their next game by chasing a target of 188, mainly due to the cameos by Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan, Fleming and Morkel. In their next game, Chennai defeated Kings XI Punjab by 18 runs after Subramaniam Badrinath and skipper Dhoni scored half-centuries. The match also witnessed Chennai's Lakshmipathy Balaji claiming the first hat-trick of the tournament and in the process also getting the first five-for (5/24 in 4 overs) in IPL history. However, they were crushed by the Mumbai Indians in Mumbai as opener Sanath Jayasuriya struck an unbeaten 114 off just 48 balls for the home team, to hand a 9-wicket defeat to the Super Kings. In their eleventh match of the season, they beat the Kolkata Knight Riders by 3 runs (D/L method) in a rain-affected match at the Eden Gardens. In the same match, Makhaya Ntini took the third hat-trick of the tournament and won the 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.