It was the first ball of the fifth over when Mitchell Johnson dropped Brendon McCullum off Anureet Singh. That time, McCullum was batting on 21 and from there he took Chennai Super Kings’ score to 192 for three with the help of captain MS Dhoni, who also played a breezy knock.
It was CSK all the way as the Kings XI Punjab crashed to a humiliating 97 runs defeat in their sixth match of the IPL. After this win CSK are now the table topper with 10 points from six games while the Kings are right at the bottom of points table.
It is more or less clear that CSK will the first team to qualify for the IPL play-offs this year after some convincing wins against formidable oppositions. The only blotch in their campaign this year is their loss against the Rajasthan Royals.
Otherwise, the Dhoni-led side is having a dream run in the competition. No team can really match the Super Kings. Right from top to bottom, every member of CSK is made up of sterner stuff. Each of them is committed to win matches and nothing else.
With so much of resolute, this team is virtually impossible to beat and when you drop a catch of McCullum, no team should even dream of coming back into the match. Against the Kings, the explosive CSK opener made most of the dropped catch.
He, eventually, took the match away from Kings’ reach. Both Dwayne Smith and Suresh Raina too played their roles forcefully. By the time, the Kings came into bat to chase a steep total; they had a Himalayan task to save the game at the Chepauk in Chennai on Saturday.
Barring opener Murali Vijay, none of the Kings batsmen could stand up tall in front of the Chennai bowling. It was combination of good pace and spin bowling that saw the Kings crumbling like cookies.
They lost wickets at regular intervals and made a mess of their chase. It’s tough to believe that this was the team, which played the IPL final last year. The Kings hardly played like the team which had beaten the CSK last year during the IPL play-offs.
