Chennai Super King open their winning streak against the defending champion Mumbai Indians in the opening game of IPL 2020 season. Chennai King win by 5 wickets.
Better than expected. Mainly because there was no sewing involved for MS Dhoni’s PowerPlay star of the last two seasons, Deepak Chahar, who invited Rohit Sharma and Quinton de Kock to drive and flick to get started. De Kock then punished his mistaken SA teammate Lungi Ngidi for 18 runs to bring MI to 45 without a loss in just four overs.
MI v CSK Match 1 Detail and Stats
Dhoni turned to Rohits Pet Peeve – a leg spinner – and got results right away. Piyush Chawla, CSK’s shiny new acquisition, rolled slower than usual, luring Rohit to hit a thrown ball straight off Currat in the middle of the off. De Kock followed his skipper on the next round with a limp dismissal that pulled Curran straight to Watson in the middle of the wicket.
Saurabh Tiwary, who last played an IPL game in the 2017 season, ran out in 4th place and attacked CSK at a time when Dhoni was trying to establish his spin choke. Tiwary particularly liked one of Dhoni’s most trusted middle-overs weapons – Ravindra Jadeja. Chahar came back after a memorable first spell and broke another burgeoning partnership with Suryakumar Yadavs Wicket. Even that didn’t stop MI, as Hardik Pandya also played with Jadeja, while Tiwary’s solid cameo went well beyond halftime.
What will be very important in games in Abu Dhabi – border fields. Faf du Plessis was clutched in his fangs, which gave Jadeja two wickets in a single over and winches from MI’s sails. Following the lead to make amends after a non-colored opening spell, Ngidi hit his lengths perfectly at the back of the innings to get the knockout blow against a rather ailing opponent. MI went from 121 for 3 to 162 for 9, with only 36 runs coming from the last five overs.
Miserable. Both Trent Boult and James Pattinson made the ball swing and used their cutters well too. The bad opening trend trend continued for CSK and decreased for 2 to 6. The Ambati Rayudu-Faf du Plessis pair was slowly rebuilt as the MI bowlers revealed very little in the first six overs.
MI bowlers had to work overtime on the ball with the towel, but both Rahul Chahar and Krunal Pandya failed to give Rohit the decisive break in the middle-overs. On a surface that wasn’t as sticky as in the first innings, the two CSK stalwarts felt at home. Rayudu raised his racket to 33 balls for half a century when the partnership with the third wicket brought the game closer to CSK’s top territory from which they often emerge on the winning side.
Jasprit Bumrah Bowlling
Not correct. There was one in the 16th when Chahar was good at running backwards and making a high catch of his own bowling to end Rayudu’s extraordinary innings. CSK sent left-hander Ravindra Jadeja in front of Dhoni after there were overs left for MI’s off-spinner Krunal Pandya. The movement didn’t work, however, when Krunal sent Jadeja back with a faster one that was angled into its padding and had previously caught him on the leg.
Dhoni tried to trick again – by sending Sam Curran in front of him – and this time to great effect. Curran’s cameo with five balls worth 18 dwarfed the equation to 16 out of 12. Bumrah ended his bad day with numbers from 1 to 43, of which 11 came over on the 19th. Du Plessis, who also reached his half century in the 19th, sealed the victory two fours before the first two balls by Trent Boult in the final.
