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 riot 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 through extra cover 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 not 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 in the 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 big knocks in the T10 version 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 just begun. 

Remember, the Super Kings had thrashed Punjab 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.