CHENNAI: There’s a reason the Chepauk is a ‘fortress’ for CSK. Mumbai Indians, in the past, have been able to breach it, but the current lot doesn’t have the depth to challenge their biggest rivals, at least in these conditions.
The gulf in class was evident from the first ball as CSK ran away with a six-wicket win with 14 balls to spare to close in on a last-four berth. The boost in net run-rate also gives MS Dhoni’s men a fair shot at a coveted top-two berth.
Mumbai, on the other hand, are at a point of no return, with no margin for error. On Saturday, CSK did not need individual performers.
On a pitch where the ball was stopping just a bit, medium-pacers Deepak Chahar and Tushar Deshpande removed Cameron Green, Ishan Kishan and Rohit Sharma in no time as MI were reduced to 14-3.
Rohit’s attempted pick-up scoop over Dhoni’s head, which landed in the hands of short third-man, was a moment that the skipper would like to delete from his memory as soon as possible. Rohit now has the highest number of ducks (16) in IPL history, a dubious record.
From that sort of position, tt becomes virtually impossible to mount a comeback at the Chepauk against CSK. Still new boy Nehal Wadhera (64 off 51 balls) and Suryakumar Yadav (26 off 22 balls) gave MI a bit of hope.
Wadhera, playing in place of the injured Tilak Verma, gave himself time, chose the right balls and found the gaps against mature spinners Ravindra Jadeja and Maheesh Theekshana. But Surya’s dismissal, an attempted cut shot off Jadeja that went wrong, was particularly disappointing from an MI point of view.
Wadhera and Tristan Stubbs were still trying, but at the back-end it was CSK’s new slinger Matheesha Pathirana (3-15) who completely took the game away from MI. He landed his yorkers (both the faster and the slower) consistently and that made the occasional length ball also difficult to pick.
Wadhera and Stubbs both fell to Pathirana and a score of 139 was never going to be enough.
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With no pressure, the CSK top-order got some quality centre-wicket practice against a pedestrian Mumbai Indians attack, whose best bowler was veteran leggie Piyush Chawla (2-25). But the rest were not just up to the mark as the likes of Devon Conway, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Shivam Dubey got the runs at their own pace to make it a double against their bitter rivals.
