Dhoni spoke about quitting captaincy last year: Fleming

Chennai Super Kings head coach Stephen Fleming on Saturday said that Mahendra Singh Dhoni relinquishing captaincy of the IPL team this year was not a sudden decision as it was 'talked about' during the last season.

Fleming, however, said the timing of stepping down from CSK captaincy was left to Dhoni.

"We have talked about it. It is something MS talked about with me during last season. The timing was though his call," Fleming said after CSK lost to Kolkata Knight Riders by six wickets in the opening match of IPL 2022 on Saturday.

After twelve seasons, four title triumphs and five runner-up finishes later, Dhoni on Thursday decided to hand over the captaincy of CSK to his trusted lieutenant Ravindra Jadeja.

In a brief statement, CSK had said that the 40-year-old will continue to represent the franchise for the "season and beyond", having led one of the most successful IPL sides since the tournament's inception in 2008 -- barring the two seasons when the team was suspended in the wake of the spot-fixing scandal.

Fleming said the transition from Dhoni to Jadeja has gone nicely.

"It has been documented widely to give Jadeja a clean slate going in the series (IPL). It was communicated to (CSK owner N Srinivasan) through the team," the former Kiwi captain said.

"So, we have 100 per cent spoken about that. It has been a bit of transition here, it has been a little bit of change but went through nicely."

• IPL 2022