India provide visa assurance to Pakistan cricket team for World T20

BCCI informs nine venues to continue preparations for World T20

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) held it’s seventh Apex Council meeting on Friday virtually and had some discussions regarding the upcoming World T20 that is scheduled to take place in India later this year. A source close to the BCCI while talking to ANI told that the nine venues selected for the World T20 have been asked to continue with the preparations. The source further said that a call will be taken closer to the event as it is pretty early to make any decisions but the preparations shall go on. “The nine venues have been informed and it was again discussed that the preparations should continue for the showpiece event with an eye on the COVID-19 situation and a call will be taken closer to the event. It is too early to imagine what can or will happen in October-November with regard to the coronavirus situation. But preparations shall be on,” said the source. There were also discussions about the domestic calendar in the meeting. The board is looking to start off in September but again a final decision on this can only be taken according to the COVID-19 situation in the country. “There were discussions on the domestic calendar as well as the BCCI is very serious about it and we were looking at September to kickstart the season with Syed Mushtaq Ali and then 50-over and days format, but then have to see how things pan out,” the source added.

IPL 2021 | PBKS vs CSK: Hits & Flops as Super Kings blow Punjab away once again

The Chennai Super Kings opened their account in the 14th edition of the Indian Premier League with a six-wicket win over the Punjab Kings in Mumbai. The men in yellow were at the top of the game from the word go as the pacer Deepak Chahar ran riots among the Punjab batsmen with a four-wicket haul in his four-over spell. The Kings plummeted to 106/8 in their 20 overs which the Super Kings chased down with considerable ease, albeit with some drama in the end. The Super Kings will be elated for this complete performance while the Punjab Kings will be scathing themselves for such colossal failure with the bat on a pitch that eased up after the new ball lost its shine. Here, we will decipher the best and the worst performances from the game between the Super Kings and the Punjab Kings. Hits Deepak Chahar Deepak Chahar was one of the most instrumental players for the successful return of the Super Kings in the IPL after serving a two-year ban in the 2018 edition. He had picked up 10 wickets in the 2018 edition when the Super Kings went on to win the title while his performance went double up in the next edition. He snapped up 22 wickets in the campaign where the Super Kings ended up becoming finalists. However, his numbers dwindled in the last season and it was pathognomonic for the Super Kings as they could not reach the playoffs stage for the first time in history. Chahar’s bowling was built on the swing he gets from the new ball, but as he grew in the confidence of his abilities, subtle variations such as the back of the hand slower ball and knuckle ball have also been added in the pandora box of tricks. Dhoni has been making the point about the first half an hour of the game in Mumbai tilted in the favour of the bowling side and luckily for the Super Kings, the coin tilted in his favour. The setting, the conditions and the necessity, all set up for a cracker of a contest between Chahar with the new ball and KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal from the Punjab side. The night was to be Chahar’s and none of the Punjab batsmen as Agarwal became the first victim of an unplayable outswinger from the pacer from Rajasthan. He also troubled Rahul with an outswinger but the right-hander played it late to not succumb to it. Agarwal was not lucky though as the delivery that dismissed him kept coming in the air before swinging away just in front of his bat. A helpless face from Agarwal established the quality of delivery Chahar produced to get the Punjab Kings under pressure. The next man in—Chris Gayle was tested on the very first ball with another delivery swinging into him. Chahar showed his versatility with the one that went across Gayle to find the edge. However, Ruturaj Gaikwad spilt an easy chance to hand Gayle a lucky getaway. Gayle looked in the mood to punish Chahar after a lucky escape and put him under pressure with two consecutive boundaries to start his next over. Dhoni has captained Chahar for a long time now and he understood his strength can be best utilised when there was help from the surface. He persisted with Chahar for another over and it paid dividends with two big wickets of Gayle and Nicholas Pooran. Chahar relied on his knuckle ball after the ball stopped swinging and Gayle was still expecting full-paced deliveries because of the assistance he was getting off the surface. Gayle was flummoxed once again, and Ravindra Jadeja did not repeat the mistake of offering the left-hander another life. The next man in Pooran was asked to pull a delivery with a fine leg back. The instinctive batsman that Pooran is, hit the shot straight to Shardul Thakur in a manner that the commentator Alan Wilkins described as ‘a laser-guided missile.’ Neither Chahar was done for the night, and nor Dhoni’s reliance on him to take more and more wickets as the pacer was persisted with to bowl out inside seven overs of the innings. Another move paid off as Deepak Hooda—the man who batted with character in the last game chipped a gentle away seamer to Faf du Plessis at mid-off. The new ball spell from Chahar would please both MS Dhoni and Stephen Fleming as it will add cushioning to the bowling department that is still waiting for Lungi Ngidi to bring some pace with him. Moeen Ali Moeen Ali was brought to the CSK camp with a specific purpose of throwing caution into the winds— an aspect of the game that the Super Kings lacked badly in the last season. Two games into the current season, and Ali is doing what he has been asked for without breaking any sweat. The target of 107 runs should not have been a steep one for the Super Kings, but a chance to boost the net run rate was in the offering. But, both the opener Ruturaj Gaikwad and du Plessis struggled to tee off straightway. Hence, the Super Kings needed Ali to get going from the word go and finish off the chase well as soon as possible to cash in on the net run rate. He started in classical fashion hitting Riley Meredith between mid-off and clever with amazing ease. He never looked back and started hitting gaps as the Punjab bowlers offered him fuller deliveries in hope of help from the surface or air like Chahar extracted. He was dismissed only after a 31-ball 46 to put the Super Kings firmly in control of the match. Before, he had also bowled well giving away only 17 runs from the three overs he was asked to bowl after the initial outburst from Chahar. Shahrukh Khan Shahrukh Khan was picked up by the Punjab Kings in the auction earlier this year for his flamboyance with the bat for Tamil Nadu in this year’s edition of the domestic Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. He could not get the chance to do a lot in the last game against the Rajasthan Royals as the majority of the balls and limelight were captured by KL Rahul and Hooda. However, a top-order collapse brought him to the crease just in the fifth over. He got the stage and all the prerequisite plot to become a star and resurrect the Punjab Kings from a big hole they found themselves in to justify his franchise owner Prety Zinta’s jubilation of ‘we got Shahrukh’ after buying him in the auction. He was ready for the challenge and when Jadeja offered him a rare run-scoring opportunity with a short ball, he pounced on with full intent to get up and running. There was no looking back for SRK and Shardul Thakur was dispatched through the cover boundary by a crisp back foot drive. What was his opportunity was also his control on the night against the Super Kings and he could not have afforded an all-out approach with just three men left behind him in the dugout. However, he was aware of the larger cause and whenever he got even a hint of opportunity, he came at the bowlers with his full might. A six off Ali and a pair of boundaries against Shardul Thakur and Dwayne Bravo to allow the Punjab Kings to be safe from the embarrassment of getting knocked out before 100. He paced his innings and played smartly with batsmen falling around him but could not bring up his maiden fifty in IPL. He would love to get a landmark to his name early in the tournament but his performance and composure would come as a heartening sign for the Kings who saw nothing going their way in Mumbai. Flops Ruturaj Gaikwad The presence of Shane Watson and Faf du Plessis at the top of the order did ot allow Ruturaj Gaikwad the opportunity to bat at the top of the order for the Super Kings in the last season. However, repetitive failures of the experienced duo opened the door for him in the latter part of the season. And, he took the opportunity with both hands to earn a reckoning from the coach Fleming after the end of the campaign that ended in a disaster. Gaikwad was a certain starter for the Super Kings coming into the 14th edition of the IPL, but the shreds of evidence from the last two games have shown worrying signs for both the batsman and the franchise. He has not found any of the timing he was batting with last season. It could also be down to lack of game time leading up to the IPL, but what will trouble the CSK management is that he has looked all at sea against the quality pace bowling. He was caught rooted to the crease against the pace trio of the Punjab Kings comprising Mohammed Shami, Jhye Richardson and Riley Meredith. He survived till the fifth over but scored a labouring 5 runs from 15 balls before holing out at the deep midwicket boundary while attempting to pull. Thankfully for the CSK, the target was not big enough to put pressure on the batsmen following Gaikwad otherwise the game was gone for all money. Gaikwad has had a torrid start to the game and was the culprit just six days into the game by dropping Chris Gayle at backward point off the bowling of Deepak Chahar. Again, he was lucky enough to not regret it as Chahar finally got the better of Gayle through a tumbling catch from Jadeja. Nicholas Pooran Nicholas Pooran has been one of the finest batting talents coming from Caribbean islands in the recent past. He was terrific with the bat in the last season for the Punjab side although at the expense of consistency. Pooran was coming into the IPL on the back of many short versions of the game where he had no task but to tear apart the bowling attacks. When he was demoted to the number five position below Deepak Hood in the last game, it created a furore on social media that the Kings are wasting their talents once again. He was dismissed without doing anything in the last game as Hooda and Rahul had already taken the life out of the Royals bowling unit. The game against the Super Kings though provided him with the opportunity to shine bright and arrest a collapse of the top order inflicted by an accurate Deepak Chahar. He could not resist the temptation though and was sucked into a well-laid trap by the bowler to walk off the ground scoring another duck. He has had two ducks in a row in the 14the edition of the IPL but the latest one against the Super Kings will hurt more. The Super Kings would be elated at a clinical win against the Punjab Kings, but MS Dhoni and Stephen Fleming would be honest in reminding the troops that the task has not been done yet. Remember, the Super Kings had thrashed the Kings in the first encounter between them to hint that they were back. However, it turned out to be the last hurrah for a gasping team running out of breath in the completion. On the other hand, the Punjab Kings would like to put this debacle behind them except for the hard lessons they have learnt. Anil Kumble - KL Rahul partnership needs to build a team that is averse to such nightmarish performances after an impressive win and bring some consistency in their game plan.

IPL 2021 | PBKS vs CSK - What Experts Said as Deepak Chahar masterclass grants Chennai mammoth victory

Things went horribly wrong for the Punjab Kings in their second match of the Indian Premier League as they were handed a 6-wicket defeat by the Chennai Super Kings at the Wankhede Stadium on Friday, 16 April. Bouncing off the highest score of the season after scoring 221 runs against Rajasthan Royals on match number four, Punjab returned to score the lowest score of the season (106) in their registered 20 overs. The mega top order comprising KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal and Chris Gayle were sent back to the hut within the first five overs of the playing leaving the rebranded franchise gasping for air. The wrecker in chief - Deepak Chahar, rioted through the Punjab frontline bowling four overs upfront. First up, he uprooted a Mayank Agarwal’s off stump with a riveting outswinger, that moved in the air and off the pitch to make for a very ugly dismissal. He subsequently picked up the wickets of Chris Gayle, Deepak Hooda and Nicholas Pooran to send back the entire established batting arsenal of the team. If not for Shahrukh Khan’s defiant 47 off 36, Kings’ could have looked way more embarrassing than they were made to look after the game. Coming into an easy chase, CSK made quite a meal of it at the start of the innings, getting stuck against some quality fast bowling. With the fast bowlers still earning some purchase from the surface, Ruturaj Gaikwad along with Faf du Plessis got stuck in the crease and the scoreboard seemed to move nowhere in the first three overs of the innings. Bogged down by the pressure, in the last ball of the 5th over, Gaikwad in a poor attempt to pull a short ball from left-handed Arshdeep Singh, ended up lobbing up an easy chance to Deepak Hooda stationed at deep mid-wicket. The wicket came as a blessing in disguise as Moeen Ali, relishing the new top-order role went berserk turning the tide of the game. At the time of his dismissal in the 13th over, Ali had provided enough impetus for CSK to not lose the game even if they tried hard. Post his 46 off 31 balls CSK lost two quick wickets in Suresh Raina and Ambati Rayudu but were safely put over the line before the conclusion of the 16th over. Captains’ viewpoints Coming to talk after the game, a visibly dejected KL Rahul spoke about how the pitch played differently than they had anticipated earlier and that there was not much way back for them after losing five wickets in the first six overs. “There's not much more to say. When any team loses five wickets in the first six or seven overs.... It [The pitch] did [play differently]. It was more sticky and tacky than what it looked like. Deepak with his knuckle ball got a couple of wickets. Myself getting run-out. It wasn't a 110-wicket, maybe 150-160.” Rahul spoke about the positives from the game as well and stated that when they review the game later on, the way that the Punjab pacers bowled would be an asset going forward into the tournament. “We have pace in our attack and we obviously want to use that. Playing in India can be tough and cruel. Meredith and Richardson did try to execute the plan [against RR] and it was good to see them come back. We will review the key points that we spoke before the game and like you mentioned yourself that's how cricket goes. You smile and see how you can do better if we get a similar situation when we play at the Wankhede again. It's important to learn from our mistakes, that's the kind of team that we want to be.” Rahul added. MS Dhoni marked his 200th game for Chennai in T20 competitions and there could not have been a better victory against a well-rounded side. While he did not have to do much himself, Dhoni’s use of Chahar up front earned plaudits from the minds sitting in the commentary box. “Makes me feel very good and it has been a very long journey [on playing 200 matches for CSK]. It started in 2008 - played in SA, Dubai, and back home. Never thought Mumbai would be our home. In 2011, the last time that we were happy with the Chennai wicket. Before that, there was spin, but it also helped fast bowlers. After the wicket was relaid, we found it difficult to adjust to conditions. This is a very good wicket, but it depends on the conditions on that day. The ball moved today, but it didn't swing around a lot. There was no dew and enough seam movement. Overall the years, he [Chahar] has matured into a death bowler too but he's somebody who gets more purchase than other bowlers. If you're looking to attack, why not finish his first four overs. Bravo can bowl at the death. It's not a secret.” Shedding some light into the new role for Moeen Ali at the top of the order, Dhoni stated that a gifted timer of the ball needs to get more batting time. “We felt if Moeen bats up the order, we can make use of the resources that we got. Moeen is a very good timer of the ball and plays authentic shots. We have to make the most of the resources. I thought that [lbw call] was high and that's what the bowler needs to take. That's where the bowler's input is very important. I always thought DRS is one to take howlers away from the game. You take the gamble when it's really important or the last over of the game.” Dhoni concluded. Experts’ opinions It is a no brainer that much of the conversation today was around Deepak Chahar who took the first maiden wicket in this edition of the IPL. He seemed to have impressed the Indian national team coach Ravi Shastri who wrote on Twitter that Chahar's ability to swing the ball both way in the initial overs can even undo the best players in the game. Veteran commentator Ayaz Memon put the nail in the head and added on to Rahul's statement of losing early wickets. With the match wrapping up before 10:45 IST, presenter Chloe Amanda Bailey thanked Super Kings for not keeping her up late in the night. One particular incident that caught people's eye was the odd umpiring process in the potential dismissal of Faf du Plessis in the 14th over of the game. Batting against Riley Meredith, Faf failed to connect a short ball that the Punjab outfit thought was edged off his glove to the keeper. On appealing, the on-field umpire first sent it for a bouncer check (second of the over), a review that came back negative. The third umpire then asked the on-field umpire to call it an out without even considering DRS. After it being called out, the decision was reviewed by the DRS where it showed that Faf had not edged that delivery. A bit of a confusion really! The process amused Mumbai Indians' all-rounder Jimmy Neesham like it did us all. T20 cricket is a game of intent, and while it was present from one end of the CSK batting with Moeen Ali attacking every single bowler, youngster Ruturaj Gaikwad found himself on the wrong side of things failing to connect anything that came his way. Twitter was impressed with Ali's approach but feared that Gaikwad might be axed for the next game. With all teams having played two games, CSK stand at the second position in the league table with two points after their mammoth victory against Punjab. The quick finish to the game meant that they have run rate of +0.616 that might come in very handy once and if the tournament goes down to the wire. The Royal Challengers Bangalore currently rule the roost with two consecutive victories on a trot while the David Warner led Sunrisers Hyderabad trod at the bottom of the league letting slip two easy games from their hands.

PBKS vs CSK: Deepak Chahar produces first wicket-maiden of IPL 2021

Deepak Chahar was on song with the new ball and caused a real demolition of the Punjab Kings batting group at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. He moved the ball upfront and that prompted MS Dhoni to bowl him out by the seventh over of the match. Chahar was at the top of his game and proved Dhoni’s decision of giving him an extra over by bowling a maiden wicket in the seventh over to send back Deepak Hooda, who was Punjab’s dangerman in the last game. Before Hoodas’ wicket, Chahar was impressive with the new ball and swung the ball admirably to castle Mayank Agarwal with an absolute jaffa. He also relied on seam movement and pitched the ball up to test the technique of all Punjab batsmen. Then, as the ball stopped moving in the air and off the pitch, he brought out his variation of knuckle ball to find Gayle hitting the ball very early. Just one ball later, he tempted Nicholas Pooran into playing a pull shot and the top edge by snapped up safely by Shardul Thakur at the deep fine leg position. His impressive four-over spell that produced a bowling figure of 4-1-13-4 rattled the Punjab Kings and they could muster only 106 runs in their 20 overs.