Chennai Super Kings had the last laugh against Royal Challengers Bangalore when Ravindra Jadeja took them home with a four-wicket win in one of the most exciting and dramatic matches of the IPL 6. MS Dhoni and Jadeja held their nerves and kept scoring those boundaries to keep themselves in a hunt to win this match. RP Singh committed a disaster by bowling the final ball of the match as a no-ball when CSK needed just two runs to clinch this thriller. Earlier, it was Virat Kohli and AB De Villiers who setup the match very beautifully by scoring 58 and 64 runs respectively.
Here we bring to you the heroes and zeroes from the match between Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Hits
Ravindra Jadeja: Jadeja played brilliantly and stayed till the end to take his team home. He scored 38 off 20 balls and held his nerve in the critical phase of the match. He smashed three fours and one six and had a great 59 run partnership with Dhoni.
MS Dhoni: Dhoni batted very intelligently in tough situation and kept on dealing in ones and twos initially. He got into the rhythm and turned the balance in CSK’s favour with two mammoth sixes.
Virat Kohli: Virat Kohli again came up with his finest knock but this time it was not about hitting big sixes. He scored most of his runs in singles and doubles and got the team out of very tough situation. He scored 58 runs off 47 balls and knocked two fours and two sixes in his innings. He played with lot of patience in the initial part of his innings to RP Singh and Ravi Rampaul. He truly played the captain’s knock under some serious pressure.
AB De Villiers: De Villiers played an awesome knock of 64 runs in just 32 balls. He scored eight crispy boundaries and one six. He was trying every possible shot that could fetch him a boundary. He played really well with Kohli and took the score to 165 and handed over his bowlers a chance to win this match.
Chris Morris: Morris gave CSK a much needed breakthrough as he got Chris Gayle out in his very first over. In his third over, he picked up the wicket of Virat Kohli and Daniel Christian. But his final over turned out to be a disaster for him, as he gave away 20 runs and it was AB De Villiers who got those 20 runs.
Ravi Rampaul: He bowled his quota of four overs superbly and always came up with something special. First he got out Murli Vijay in his second over and then in the final over he got MS Dhoni and Dwayne Bravo who were looking to take away the match from RCB. He ended up with the bowling figures of 4/31.
Flops
RP Singh: RP Singh was not in his best form and in the last ball of the match he made the absolute mess of every effort that his teammates made to win this exciting thriller by bowling a no-ball. He gave away 41 runs in his four overs and was the most expensive bowler for RCB.
Chris Gayle: Gayle didn’t fire and got out in the second over of the match. A strong performance in away match is expected of him but he failed to do so against CSK. His presence on the crease for a longer time would have ensured a bigger score for RCB.
Murali Kartik: Apart from RP Singh, Kartik also didn’t bowl well and gave away 29 runs in three overs. His left-arm spin came in for no use as he failed to restrict the CSK batsmen at the crucial point of time.
Murli Vijay: Vijay departed after scoring just two runs off five balls and proved to be a failure on his home-ground. His inconsistent form has been the cause of worry till now. It’s good that CSK won this match and they won’t be looking to change their winning combination in upcoming matches
Mike Hussey: Hussey got out early as he pulled the ball straight into the hands of fielder standing at deep square leg. He took 16 deliveries to score six runs and slowed the innings at the beginning of the chase.
By Amit Chopra
Indian Sports News Network
