CHENNAI: Defending champions Chennai Super Kings put in an all-round show to beat Pune Warriors by 13 runs at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium Chennai on Thursday.
Pune selected to field and Chennai compiled 164-5, chiefly through a 116-run opening stand among Faf du Plessis (58) and S. Badrinath (57), and then claimed regular wickets through strong catches to stall the visiting team 13 runs short of the target. Pune had kept themselves in the hunt in spite of the frequent wickets, and a 44-run alliance for the 6th wicket between Angelo Mathews and Steve Smith bring them to within 25 runs needed off the last 2 overs.
Doug Bollinger bowled an excellent 19th over, conceding just four and accounting for Smith and the 21 necessary in the last proved to be too much for the tail-enders after Mathews was clean bowled by Dwayne Bravo 1st ball of the 20th. Earlier, also paced half-centuries by the openers du Plessis and Badrinath – who was bump up the order in place of the out-of-form M. Vijay – take Chennai Super Kings to 164-5 on a slow wicket. The opening batsman’s added 116 in 15.3 overs. Chennai did not begin with any speed.
They reached 17 in four overs, when Badrinath kicked in, pristine fours off Samuels. du Plessis soon joined the fun, creaming a 6 and 4 in Bhubaneswar Kumar’s over, the sixth of the innings, as Chennai reached 42 at the end of the obligatory Powerplay.A phase of calm consolidation followed, as the Indo-South Africa activity put their trust in ones and twos, making only the loose delivery count for boundaries. One such couple brings up du Plessis’ 2nd fifty of the match, in 43 balls. Badri too joined the club of half-centurions when a spree of 4off Bhubaneswar got him to the attraction in 42 balls.
Chennai suffer a double jolt when both set batsmen were dismiss in the same over - bowled by Samuels - caught by the same fielder at deep square leg. A few balls later Suresh Raina was out for a duck, to a short-pitch release, which he top-edged to fine-leg. Captain Dhoni came in and smashed a victorious 28 off just 12 balls – include a menacing six off Samuels in the final over – as Chennai posted a spirited total. Robin Uthappa and Jesse Ryder began Pune’s chase with a flurry of boundaries before both lost their wicket to Nuwan Kulasekara. Uthappa was caught superbly by R. Ashwin running in from mid-off, while the plump New Zealander was taken by Bravo – who penniless into a jig after creation sure the ball hadn’t pop out following his dive.
Captain Sourav Ganguly arrived at the crease, at once pulling and flicking Bollinger for boundaries, as Pune ended their 1st six overs with 53 on the board, for the loss of 2wickets. They lost another wicket, that of Manish Pandey, to one more good catch – this time by S. Badrinath, who ran a fair distance and hung on to the ball through a confused dive at extra-cover.Shadab Jakati, who had bowled his 1st over for just four, returned for his s2nd and got the big wicket of Ganguly. The Prince of Kolkata go for a big one and sensing that, Jakati drop it somewhat short – the resulting shot looped up in the air and was easily caught by Kulasekara at mid-off.
The visitors needed exactly 100 runs from 10 overs, and although the ball had now started to turn, with Samuels, Smith and Mathews still around, Pune could yet have made a first of it, but the required blinder did not become visible, leaving Pune stranded on 151-7.
Man of the match:
Nuwan Kulasekara
Kings XI v RCB (20:00 local | 14:30 GMT)
Nuwan Kulasekara
Today Match
Kings XI v RCB (20:00 local | 14:30 GMT)
