The Chennai Super Kings (CSK) have become the first team to crash out of playoffs contention in this year’s Indian Premier League. Rajasthan Royals’ (RR) 8 wicket win over Mumbai Indians (MI) ended the playoff hopes of the three time champions.
In every season that CSK has played, this is the first time that the team failed to book a playoff berth. In Sunday’s double header, CSK comfortably beat Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) by 8 wickets. RCB won the toss and decided to bat first. The openers gave RCB a decent start but couldn’t get carry on. Virat Kohli (50 of 43 balls) and AB de Villiers (39 of 36) top scoring for RCB, taking them to 145 for the loss of 6 wickets. CSK all-rounder Sam Curran was pick of the bowlers scalping 3 wickets.
In the second innings, youngster Rituraj Gaikwad set the tone for the chase and took the CSK home with an unbeaten 65 of 51 balls. He was supported by Faf du Plessis (25 of 13), Ambati Rayudu (39 of 27) and MS Dhoni who scored an unbeaten 19 of 21. Yuzvendra Chahal was the pick of the bowlers for RCB scalping just one wicket and giving away 21 runs of his 4 overs. Despite this, CSK’s playoff hopes came crashing down as RR chased down MI’s 195 in 18.2 overs with 8 wickets in hand.
With Rohit Sharma still on the sidelines, MI’s stand-in skipper Kieron Pollard won the toss and elected to bat first. Jofra Archer made early the early in road as he got the in-form Quinton de Kock out for just 6 runs.
However, just like the previous games, he found no support in any of fast bowlers as Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan put 83 runs before the latter was caught on the boundary rope by Jofra Archer, which many say could be the catch of the season.
Wickets continued to tumble for MI before Hardik Pandya, who was waiting for an innings like this, decided to take the game away from RR scoring an unbeaten 60 of 21 bowls. Hardik also became the first player in this IPL to take a knee in support of Black Lives Matter after reaching his half century. MI finished with 195
Rajasthan opener Robin Uthappa got out after scoring 13 of 11 balls. Steve Smith also played an 8 ball 11 run cameo before being castled by his fellow countryman James Pattinson but it was all about the Stokes-Samson show.
After starting slow in this year’s IPL and being constantly criticized for trying to hit the ball too hard, Ben Stokes played a fluent knock not only bringing up his first 50 for this season but converting it into a match winning 107 of 60 balls not out. He was well supported by Sanju Samson (54 of 31) who was looking aggressive from the start. The duo took MI’s bowlers to the cleaner. Thus ending a super Sunday.
