|| India Correspondent ||

Former India captain Kapil Dev said that it will be "impossible" for MS Dhoni to perform well if he decides on playing in the Indian Premier League without having proper match practice like this year. Chennai Super Kings became the first team to be out of the IPL play-offs for the very first time in their 11 appearances in the cash-rich league so far.

On the other hand, MS Dhoni, who last played competitive cricket in last year's World Cup semi-final before playing in the IPL 2020, managed to score only 200 runs in 14 games with no half-centuries and a strike rate of 116 as well.

Meanwhile, Kapil Dev, who recently underwent angioplasty after suffering from a heart attack, wants Dhoni to play a lot of games in the domestic circuit to get his swashbuckling form back.

"If Dhoni decides on playing only IPL every year, then it's impossible for him to perform. It's not a good thing to talk about age but at his age (39 years), the more he plays, the more his body will be tuned," Kapil told 'ABP News'. "If you don't play any cricket for 10 months a year and suddenly play IPL, you can see what happened. You can always have a season up or down if you have played so much cricket. It has happened to someone like Chris Gayle also."

"He should go back to first-class cricket (domestic List A and T20) and play there." The straight-talking former all-rounder made it clear that it will be a challenge for Dhoni given that he has already indicated that he is "definitely not" retiring from the IPL. "If someone has achieved so much, the dip in form does affect and it becomes a challenge. Let's see how he comes out of it," Kapil Dev concluded.