While Fleming didn't specify the nature - and extent - of Chahar's injury, he suggested that early signs weren't promising.

"Yeah, the travelogue is pretty busy," Fleming said after CSK lost to Punjab by seven wickets. "There's a lot of ins and outs. So, Deepak Chahar doesn't look good. The initial feeling wasn't great. So, I'm hoping for a more positive report when the physio and the doctor have a look."

"The Sri Lankan boys are off to get their visas," Fleming said. "We're hoping that their process is smooth and we get them back for the next game up north. Richard Gleeson was good and it was a positive. Losing Fizz [Mustafizur] is disappointing, there's a lot happening isn't it?

"Tushar has a bit of flu going around as well. So we've had to make a few changes, which is unusual. Again, that's part of it and again we have got the resources. Just they haven't had the game time to be really comfortable with their roles and us to be comfortable with a game plan, which we're struggling with a little."

On his IPL debut, Gleeson, 36, swung the new ball both ways, and provided CSK with one of the three wickets they took on Wednesday. Gleeson also has yorkers and bouncers in his repertoire but beyond him and Pathirana, CSK don't have a specialist overseas seamer in their squad.

"Gleeson is a good new-ball bowler and can swing the ball both ways and had a little bit of zip and one hit Dhoni's gloves hard," McClenaghan said on Timeout, ESPNcricinfo's analysis show. "He was impressive in his first outing in the IPL in difficult conditions. So he is going to be good from there and it's what you do with the other spot. Mustafizur is gone. If Pathirana is out for more than one game, I would probably look at playing Mitchell Santner against Punjab. Because you can bowl him in the powerplay to Jonny Bairstow and Prabhsimran [Singh] and if you get Rilee Rossouw out, he will be a good operator in the middle."

Mukesh Choudhary, who has played just one competitive game since the start of 2023, and Simarjeet Singh, who hasn't played any competitive matches in that period, are among the Indian bowling options along with Maharashtra legspinner Prashant Solanki, who was on the subs bench for Wednesday's fixture.

"The Dube factor is the one [reason]," Fleming said. "So if you get to six overs, that's the perfect time for him to come in. The next thing is with left-right [combination], we want [Ravindra] Jadeja, who has got a positive role as well, to come in and take them [the spinners] on as well. But they bowled well. The Rizvi one, we will discuss a little bit more, may go the other way around with that one but again he's positive and his ability to hit sixes in training has certainly been good. But there's a temperament part of that as well that young players need to learn. So we have got a bit of information from that.

"The casualty was Mitchell going down the order. What we learnt from the first part of the tournament was if it goes too low, there are other players - Moeen Ali and MS [Dhoni] - who can push the game along. So the window closes there but it was very much getting the tactics right for what we wanted to do in the middle. And that was to break their spinners up but they won that competition."