The 49th Indian Premier League game took place at Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium between the Chennai Super Kings and the Punjab Kings. It was an exciting battle.
When PBKS won the toss, they decided to bowl first. Ajinkya Rahane and Ruturaj Gaikwad had a solid opening partnership to get CSK off the ground. Rahane had a calm inning of 29 runs off 24 balls before Harpreet Brar bowled him out. As captain of the squad, Gaikwad set the tone for the innings with a spectacular 62 off 48 balls, giving the team much-needed consistency.
Nevertheless, CSK was unable to match PBKS’s bowling onslaught and lost wickets frequently. Despite their strong efforts, CSK was unable to build on the starts of Sameer Rizvi (21 off 23) and Ravindra Jadeja (24 off 25). CSK amassed an inadequate total of 162/7 in their allocated 20 overs, thanks to Moeen Ali’s explosive 15 off 9 balls and MS Dhoni’s cameo of 14 runs off 11 balls.
Prabhsimran Singh and Jonny Bairstow gave PBKS, who were chasing 163, a strong start. Bairstow hit a brilliant forty-six runs off thirty balls, while Singh made a rapid thirteen off ten balls. With an outstanding 43 off 23 balls, Rilee Rossouw kept the momentum going. But Sam Curran’s brilliant 26 off 20 balls and Shashank Singh’s undefeated 25 off 26 balls were what helped PBKS win with 13 balls remaining.
Also read: IPL 2024: Punjab Kings 2nd innings highlights against CSK in Match 49
Ultimately, PBKS easily reached 163/3 in 17.5 overs, chasing down the mark. Despite taking one wicket apiece, Richard Gleeson, Thakur, and Dube failed to prevent PBKS from winning by a convincing seven wickets. Because of his innings that won the game, Harpreet Brar was named Player of the Match.
The losing skipper, Ruturaj Gaikwad, said:
Probably 50-60 runs short, the pitch wasn’t great when we batted, it got better later on. With the impact rule as well, we were well short. I’ve practiced the tosses (during the practice sessions), it’s not going well in the match, not sure what to do. To be truthful, I’m under pressure when I go to the middle (for the toss). We were also surprised that we won by a big margin in the last match considering the conditions (win by 78 runs against SRH).
I think the last two games, the conditions and pitch was better, it allowed us to fight hard and get to 200+, today, it wasn’t good enough to get to even 180. It’s a real problem (on the player missing due to injuries and Chahal walking away in the first over), there are phases where you want wickets, but you have only two bowlers, the dew took the spinners out of the equation. It was tough, but there’re four games left and we will try and come back to winning ways.
Winning skipper Sam Curran said:
Very happy. Everytime you come to Chennai and take two wins, always a special feeling. Same as last year, we lost a lot of our home games and won away, finding a similar pattern. We are in a position where we need to win all our games, we come up against the same opposition in a few days. I think when you come to Chennai, you now how hot it is and dew is going to settle in. Today we wanted to try something different by trying Rabada in the powerplay. We wanted to use our spinners later on, so took a punt on trying KG within the powerplay.
Chahar came back and was the best bowler in the 260 game, and he’s bowling with great confidence. He stepped up when I asked him to bowl against MSD in the 19th over. (On bowling Chahar in the 19th) The pace bowlers were going for a bit in the end, and I wanted to try something different. Asked Rilee what he reckoned and took that gamble with spin. In this game where everyone has been going for runs, you need to take such gambles. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. We come against the same opposition so we have one up on them.
It is a new game, new conditions but this win will give us a lot of confidence. I think our bowlers were superb, the spinners and Jonny striking them well, even the way we paced that chase, it was brilliant. Need to built on that confidence.
POTM Harpreet Brar said:
It was a good wicket to bowl on, and even Rahul bowled really well. I have been playing since 6 years, so my confidence has been pretty high. Now bowling to these legends of the game feels normal, I just bowl to my strengths. To be honest, I don’t think wickets, my aim is only to bowl lots of dot balls and dot balls create the wickets. When there is spin in the wicket, the bowlers confidence goes up and it is a bit helpful.
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