It was one horrendous of an example shown by the Chennai Super Kings as to how to not pace your chase in a match. Batting at 90/1 in the 10th over to not reaching even 160 after the end of the 20 with just five wickets lost, there was something inherently lost in the team.
Having said that, it wasn’t on their own that Chennai managed to achieve this feat. There was obviously the master brain of Dinesh Karthik that executed a well laid out plan, which thankfully worked for the team. A combination of planning and execution from the opposition and lack of it from the Chennai side resulted in what could probably be called the worst run chase of the season so far.
There were many heroes in the game that included the likes of Rahul Tripathi with the bat for KKR and Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine the spin duo with the ball. For Chennai, there could have been heroes like Sam Curran with the ball and Shane Watson with the beat, but unfortunately, the hard work that they pulled in was outdone by the sheer unprofessional and stupid stroke play from two of their veteran batsmen in MS Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav
All these form the part of today’s Hits and Flops segment.
Rahul Tripathi picked up from where he had left in the last innings against the Delhi Capitals in Sharjah. But in Abu Dhabi, the guy made sure that the stays long enough on the crease to propel the team to get to a total that is respectable.
The Maharashtra batsman looked in complete control of the innings as he smashed 81 off 51 balls in an innings that included eight fours and three sixes. At a time when all the wickets were falling for KKR, Tripathi held on to one fort maki8ng sure that the team runs along. It was his runs in an otherwise failed batting line-up that gave Kolkata a chance to fight.
The fact that an uncapped player is playing ahead of a young energetic Chinaman bowler who has represented India in all three formats of the game, is in itself a testament to the talent that Chakravarthy possesses with the ball in hand.
Called into bowl in the 17th over with MS Dhoni at the strike and having gone for four in the very first ball that he bowled to Dhoni, Varun had the audacity to toss it up and then cleaned up the former India captain with an off-spinner. It was one of the major if not ‘the’ turning point in the game.
Varun gave just five runs in that moving over and finished the match with figures of 1/28 in four overs.
Varun Chakravarthy was not the only bowler that executed Dinesh Karthik’s plans to the Tee. It was the veteran Sunil Narine that jammed with the captain’s strategy to get the all-important wicket of the Australian Shane Watson that started shifting the game in favour of the KKR.
Called into the attack, late in the innings, the plan made by Dinesh Karthik worked as the West Indian not only halted the flow of runs of both Watson and Dhoni after the Ambati Rayudu wicket but also got Watson out, a record fourth time in the IPL.
As Karthik said in the post-match presentation, Nari8ne is still a ‘match-winner’ for the KKR outfit and credit must be given to Karthik for not only acknowledging it but also making sure that he is utilized well.
If there was ever a test for knowing whether a person could win you a game or not, it should be called the Kedar Jadhav Test i the ho9mnour of the legend, who after coming in the 17th over, played 12 balls to score just seven runs from it, when the team needed 13 runs an over.
A team can’t surely win from that position and Chennai didn’t. Jadhav looked like almost case in the middle and showed it with the very first ball that he played, a front foot defense to an off-spinner in the 17th over! Do you get it? I don’t either.
The person who could be and should be blamed more than Kedar Jadhav is the captain MS Dhoni. Firstly for keeping Jadhav in the team and secondly for getting out in a crucial situation to bring him to bat in that situation, Dhoni must be reprimanded by all the CSK fans.
Apart from that, the 39-year-old also made a mistake that we don’t really associate with him. After having hit a four off the previous delivery, with 39 runs needed from 22 balls, a Dhoni of the years gone by would tap a single in a corner and let Sam Curran attack from the next ball. But today he failed himself going for a big slog just after hitting the four.
In a game where he could have had the result in his favour if he faced the last legal delivery, Dhoni ju7st threw it, very unlikely of him though.
While it is a hard pill to swallow for the Yellow Brigade, but they got to not only swallow it but come out of this mode of losing matches from winning positions as they face Virat Kohli's RCB in the next game on 10th October. For KKIR, it would again be an opportunity to reach top of the table when they face Kings XI on the 10th as well, in the first game of the doubleheader.
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