Match Review

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At 50/2, Mumbai were coasting after their shaky start, but a double-strike from Imran Tahir in the span of two overs meant that the Blues were zapped back to square one with the snap of a finger. The Rohit Sharma-side eventually never recovered from that double-blow and were only able to post 144 on what - as evidenced from CSK’s batting - looked like a great batting wicket. 

Highs and Lows

Hardik Pandya might be one of the best white-ball cricketers in the world at the moment, but his batting display did more good for CSK than for Mumbai. When Pandya faces 39 deliveries, you expect him to have scored 55 or more runs, but staggeringly, in one of the more bizarre innings’ in SRL history, the all-rounder ended up scoring just 36, hitting just ONE BOUNDARY in his knock. That he remained unbeaten rubbed salt into the wounds of Mumbai. 

Rating Charts

If you can end up scoring 50/2 at the end of your powerplay after managing to score just two runs off the first two overs, then trust me, you’ve done a pretty freakin good job. The Mumbai batters could have easily succumbed to CSK’s discipline after Chahar and Shardul’s extraordinary start, but they instead decided to counterpunch the Super Kings and hit their way out of trouble. De Kock, of course, was the wrecker in chief and he single-handedly sailed the Mumbai ship. A 10/10 for Quinton and a 2/10 for the others, you could say.

Okay, the way CSK’s innings started today, I certainly have not seen anything like this in my life - not in SRL, not in any form of cricket. 31 was what the Super Kings scored off the first two overs, and all thirty one runs came off the bat of Shane Watson. The man hit SEVEN FOURS off the first two overs. I mean, it doesn’t get much crazier than this. It was a very un-CSK like start, but powerbombed Mumbai out of the match with their display in the powerplay, which yielded a staggering 65 runs. 

100 was what Mumbai reached at the end of the middle-overs (15th over), but their batting performance during that phase resembled a zero. Not only did they lose three wickets in the first three overs post the powerplay, but after that, the Pandya brothers strung together a snoozefest of a partnership with no intent that absolutely played into CSK’s hands. In fact, the duo let spinners Jadeja and Tahir finish with combined figures of 7-0-32-3. It was almost as if Hardik and Krunal were giving Dhoni a tribute. 

CSK’s required run rate, thanks to Watson’s blitz, had come down to 5.7 when the middle-overs began and all they needed to do was avoid doing anything stupid. And when you have a bunch of thirty-something year-old’s in your team, what they bring to the side is wisdom, and what wisdom does is stop you from doing stupid things. And so all CSK batsmen who batted in the middle-overs - Watson, Raina, Rayudu and Dhoni - did the sensible thing, which was to just milk the bowling around, and breezed their way closer to the target. A boring passage of play, but who cares about entertainment when boredom can you games, eh?

If it wasn’t for the somewhat loose bowling towards the end of the innings, I could have labelled the whole CSK performance as a 10/10 showing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be as both Chahar and Shardul failed to maintain the discipline they showed upfront, conceding extras and boundaries, allowing the elder Pandya to tee off and take Mumbai towards a ‘decent’ total. A team conceding 44 at the death is not bad by any means, but CSK definitely could have done better today.

*Yawns* Mumbai just bowled 10 balls at the ‘death’ overs today, a passage where it felt like they volunteered to help CSK end the match as quickly as possible. Wait, did Pandya and Co. arrange an after-party even before the match started?

Don’t believe people who tell you that MI vs CSK matches don’t disappoint. This one certainly did. Bless Shane Watson for bringing a spark to what was an otherwise drab encounter.