The defending champions posted a picture of Dhoni, who led them to their fifth title last season, exiting a vehicle on social media, captioning it “#THA7A Dharisanam!”
There’s widespread speculation that this season might mark Dhoni’s final stint as a player.
In the previous season, the 42-year-old predominantly entered the crease towards the latter stages of CSK’s innings.
CSK commenced their pre-season training camp on Saturday, with the first group of players arriving a day earlier.
The players who have currently joined include Deepak Chahar, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Simarjeet Singh, Rajvardhan Hangargekar, Mukesh Choudhary, Prashant Solanki, Ajay Mandal, Shaik Rasheed, and the versatile all-rounder Nishant Sindhu.
CSK will open their IPL 2024 campaign against Royal Challengers Bangalore on March 22.
Ahead of the mouth-watering clash, Dhoni said the convocation of players from all parts of the world in a single team makes the IPL an exciting tournament and how it provided him an “opportunity to know about other” overseas players.
In a video posted by Star Sports on their social media, Dhoni spoke about the CSK team of 2008 that had the likes of Australian great Matthew Hayden, Mike Hussey, Sri Lanka spin legend Muttiah Muralitharan and many more.
“The Chennai team that played in 2008 was a well-balanced team and had a lot of all-rounders. The team had a vast pool of experienced players such as Matthew Hayden, Mike Hussey, Muttiah Muralitharan, Makhaya Ntini, and Jacob Oram. To get them all together in one dressing room, to get to know each other was a challenge,” Dhoni said.
“I always believed that when you’re leading a team, it is important to make sure you understand each other. Once you know the individual, you know his strength, his weaknesses, it becomes easier as a team to move in the right direction,” he said.