"I haven't experienced before" - CSK head coach Stephen Fleming on what "stuck home" for him at Chepauk

Chennai Super Kings (CSK) head coach Stephen Fleming recently opened up on an incident at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, also known as Chepauk, that made him feel at home.

Fleming is one of the few cricketers who have played and coached the same franchise in the Indian Premier League (IPL).

The former New Zealand skipper recently returned to CSK's home ground in Chepauk after a three-year gap. The T20 league took place in the UAE in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 outbreak, while it was staged in Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, and Ahmedabad in 2022.

The franchise posted a short video of Fleming's comeback on their YouTube channel, where he spoke about one incident that remains special to him even today. He said:

“The noise is a part of it," the CSK head coach said. "You associate that with the game. It was a practice day that really struck home to me when we came back in and MS came out to bat and it was something like 20,000 people for our homecoming.

"Just the excitement and that noise for training was something I haven't experienced before. It was really unique and I know a lot of players and a lot of people who took note of that."

Fleming further went on to term that experience as "unexpected", saying that it still gives him goosebumps, adding:

“The hairs on the back of your neck stood up, It was unexpected," he added. "It was great to try and have the players training in that type of environment. It was a real introduction back to our home ground."

CSK will look to bounce back in 2023 after a sub-par outing in the last edition of the tournament where they finished ninth with only four wins from 14 games.

CSK squad for IPL 2023

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Chennai Super Kings squad: MS Dhoni (c), Devon Conway, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ambati Rayudu, Subhranshu Senapati, Moeen Ali, Shivam Dube, Rajvardhan Hangargekar, Dwaine Pretorius, Mitchell Santner, Ravindra Jadeja, Tushar Deshpande, Mukesh Chowdhary, Matheesha Pathirana, Simarjeet Singh, Deepak Chahar, Prashant Solanki, Maheesh Theekshana, Ajinkya Rahane, Ben Stokes, Shaik Rasheed, Nishant Sindhu, Kyle Jamieson, Ajay Mandal, and Bhagath Varma.

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