Revealing what sets Chennai Super Kings apart from other franchises in the Indian Premier League, Australian all-rounder Shane Watson said that the Yellow Army have the ability to trust players keep faith in them even if they don’t perform up to the expectations on some occasions.

“You can go for 10 games not scoring runs and still get picked. Last season, thank you to M.S. Dhoni and Stephen Fleming for keeping the faith,” Watson said in an Instagram live session on CSK’s handle.

“Every other franchise would have been ‘You are gone. Thank you for coming, but you are sitting and you are running the drinks’,” he said.

Watson, who had patchy phase throughout the initial stages of the 2018 edition of IPL, had scored 117 off 57 balls in the final against Sunrisers Hyderabad to singlehandedly win the match for his team. He almost repeated the heroics the next year against Mumbai Indians, scoring 80 off 59 but CSK fell incredibly short of MI’s total of 149.

“Through that period, unfortunately, I felt like I was batting well but I was just not scoring runs and that kept going on and on. At some stage, I was feeling after a couple of games that they are going to have to move me on, but they didn’t.”

“And then when things turned around, which I knew it would at some stage, I thanked MS and Fleming for keeping the faith, and they said there was never any doubt,” Watson said.

“And that’s phenomenal. That made me feel 10-foot tall. That’s the power of amazing leadership. To know when to stick with people you believe in, and that’s amazing for me. And I am forever indebted to those guys,” the 38-year-old added.

The World Cup-winner with Australia in 2007 and 2015, Watson, was supposed to don the yellow CSK jersey in this year’s IPL as well before the tournament was postponed due to the deadly outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

The IPL 2020, which was scheduled to be played from March 29, has been postponed to April 15 due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has already affected more than 7,400 people and killed over 200 in India.

With India in the middle of a lockdown till April 14 in an attempt to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, IPL 2020 has been subjected to an existential crisis as the April 15 start is not going to happen. An official statement is still awaited.