Hello and a warm welcome to yet another blog on the daily match reviews on this year’s IPL. Today I will be covering the game played between the Chennai Super Kings and the Punjab Kings at Chepauk, where the result was quite unexpected. So let’s get started!
Sam Curran won the toss and opted to field first, with Ruturaj losing his 9th toss, maybe equalling Kohli’s record. CSK were off to a flyer for a change as Rahane returned to form and Ruturaj was once again fluent, both unbeaten after the powerplay. But then came Brar and Rahul Chahar, who completely cut down the scoring, due to which Rahane threw his wicket and Dube and Jadeja fell cheaply. Ruturaj and Rizvi did stabilise the innings but still, the rate massively dropped after 7 overs of spin since the powerplay. Rizvi fell shortly, but Moeen and Ruturaj took on the pacers and Dhoni, not at his best, gave CSK a total of 162, something for the bowlers to defend. Both the Punjab openers fell early but Roussow and Shashank took on the spinners as well and Sam Curran came to deliver the finishing touches as the Kings, uneventfully, won the game by 7 wickets and 11 balls spare.
On a rare thumping for CSK at their den, this whole game was won by the Punjab spinners, Brar and Rahul Chahar who were absolutely brilliant with the ball, keeping things tight and applying pressure on CSK. Brar’s mantra of focusing on dot balls more than wickets should be ideal for all spinners in this league, as when you acquire those dots, you automatically get wickets. But I was baffled with CSK’s strategy by not bringing Mitchell at 3, who proved to be so effective in the last two games and using Rizvi as the impact sub because they still had the batters who could play rearguard along with Ruturaj and get a 180+ score, which came to bite them as Deepak Chahar was injured in the opening over itself, and they were a bowler short. I still cannot understand why CSK changed their batting tactics, which worked so well in the previous two games as they hit 210+ scores. These bizarre tactics and Pathirana and Deshpande not being available for the match contributed to this CSK disaster. So to summarize this game as a historical siege, the pesky PBKS spinners were patient and tried to starve out the CSK defenders, the defenders had no choice but to attack after some time and did have some chances to save their fort but Roussow and Bairstow led the artillery regiment, and Shashank and Curran led the infantry with not much resistance from CSK, breaching fortress Chepauk with ease…
So with that fun line being said, we come to the end of this blog. The next one will be on the match between SRH and RR. So stay tuned!