Drcricket7 was first to report that the Chennai Super Kings would be the pioneering team to reach the IPL playoffs. On Saturday, the prediction came true as the Super Kings became the table-toppers of this year’s IPL.
As expected, they upstaged the Kings XI Punjab by seven wickets to take their points tally to 18. They will now play the first qualifier in Mumbai on Tuesday and win there will take them to the IPL final. But, before that, a lot of cricket will be played and CSK will take one match at a time like they did against the Kings.
It was nothing but a clinical effort from the CSK that saw the Kings going down without a fight in Mohali. First, the Kings won the toss but couldn’t repeat their last match performance. Like what they have been doing in rest of the season, the Kings lost wickets at regular intervals and didn’t pose as a threat to CSK.
A lot of credit will have to be given to the CSK bowlers for restricting the Kings to a score of 130. From Pawan Negi, Ravindra Jadeja, Ashish Nehra to Ishwar Pandey, their bowlers knew their jobs well. But, the Kings lived one more time to tell a sad story of their batting.
Starting from their captain George Bailey, Glenn Maxwell to David Miller, all of them flopped in this match. It was only Axar Patel, who chipped in with some runs at the lower-order. Otherwise, the Kings weren’t in a position to score even 100 runs in their innings.
When CSK came out to chase the winning total, they were in a spot of bother when they lost two early wickets. But, a strong third wicket partnership of 92 runs off 11.4 overs between Faf du Plessis and Suresh Raina bailed CSK out of trouble. It was a very well co-coordinated effort from these two middle-order batsmen to earn the ninth win of the season.
Faf made a cool and composed 55 off 41 deliveries while Raina was unbeaten on 41 after surviving a caught and bowled chance off Maxwell. The best part about their partnership was the way they rotated the strike without going after over-ambitious shots.
Towards the end, even CSK captain MS Dhoni too played some exquisite shots to finish the game with 19 balls to spare. He slammed two four and sixes and also stayed till the end of a successful chase.
