IPL 2019 | Ben Stokes praises MS Dhoni’s finishing skills both as batsman and captain

CSK registered their third consecutive win in the 12th edition of the IPL while RR lost their third game on Sunday. The game went all down to the wire with Dwayne Bravo bowling the final over when the Royals needed 12 off that over to win the game with Ben Stokes on strike. However, the Windies all-rounder got rid of the Englishman and won it for the Chennai team in the end. Earlier in the game, it was the CSK skipper who scored a blistering half-century to take his side to a decent total of 175 in 20 overs.

After failing to take his team over the line with the bat, Stokes heaped praise on Dhoni for his ability to do the same.

"You’ve got to admire how Dhoni takes the game deep (as captain) and gets the job done. Sometimes you’ve just got to hold your hand up and say that the best players in the world can do that, and he certainly showed that tonight,” Stokes said during the post-match press conference, reported CricketNext. 

“The plan was to get it down to the last over, the first ball is the most important to get a boundary off. I felt it was unlucky that the ball went straight to the fielder but Bravo is so experienced in those situations, he knows what to do. He’s probably one of the best in the world at doing it. So you just need to say well bowled at the end of the day.”

Now, with this loss, the Jaipur-based franchise is yet to open its account in the league. After losing to Kings XI Punjab in their first game at home, the Royals were also defeated by Sunrisers Hyderabad. However, they were in good positions in all three occasions but were unable to take crucial moments of the game and ended up on the losing side. 

“Look, in our first three games we’ve put ourselves into really good positions to win all three of them. We know it’s just about winning those crucial moments. That was the last over and unfortunately we couldn’t cross the line. After losing your first three games, you probably can’t say that you’re taking positives from that but there’s no point in looking back now,” the all-rounder explained.

“We’ve got the concentrate on however many games we’ve got because if we lose four or five on the bounce, it’s going to be really tough to come back from that.”