Picture Credit: BCCI/IPL
In their first match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 season, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) defeated Mumbai Indians (MI) by four wickets with five balls to spare at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. But, a controversy wasn’t far away from the match after a video of Khaleel Ahmed and CSK captain Ruturaj Gaikwad went viral, and some fans on social media alleged that it was ball tampering.
Notably, the aforementioned viral video of the highly anticipated IPL 2025 match had CSK pacer Khaleel Ahmed preparing himself to bowl the first over of innings to the MI openers, while standing alongside Ruturaj Gaikwad, who was giving him the final pep talk ahead of the first ball. In the short clip embedded below, Ahmed was seemingly taking something out of the pocket with the ball in his other hand before passing it to Gaikwad, but nothing was conclusive.
While some of the fans on X have portrayed it as ball tampering, there is no update from the match referee in this regard thus far, which clearly means that the allegations on Khaleel Ahmed and Ruturaj Gaikwad aren’t true.
Khaleel Ahmed took three wickets and Ruturaj Gaikwad scored a fifty against MI in IPL 2025 clash
In the relatively one-sided match, Khaleel Ahmed was quite impressive with the new ball for CSK against MI, taking the key wicket of Rohit Sharma for zero before dismissing two more batters of the opposition. In the pursuit of the 156-run target, Ruturaj Gaikwad played an excellent innings of 53 runs in 26 balls with six fours and two maximums, setting up a perfect platform for CSK to chase the runs down.
Ultimately, it was a measured fifty from Rachin Ravindra, who stayed unbeaten at the crease with his 65 runs in 45 balls, an innings which included two fours and four maximums, to take CSK over the finishing line against MI for a comfortable win.
