CSK vs SRH: Warner pulls the chain, Chennai Express comes to a halt

There’s a sense of brazen hostility in the way David Warner goes about his business. Almost as if he has a bone to pick with the cricket ball. No wonder he smashes them with such contempt, especially if they are bowled short and aimed at his upper torso.

Unfortunately for CSK skipper MS Dhoni, that’s exactly where his bowlers kept pitching in and Warner wasn’t in a mood to let them get away with it. He made them pay by smashing a 28-ball 61, his 50 coming off 20 deliveries, to set up a convincing win for Sunrisers Hyderabad and keep them alive.

The big worry for bowlers while dealing with the diminutive Warner is you can’t pitch it too short for him to swivel onto his back-foot and smack you to the square boundaries. Like Mohit Sharma found out with the first delivery of the SRH innings, with Warner pulling him for four. Five balls later, it was the cover boundary. It only got worse for Mohit in his second over. The Australian first slashed him for four over point before walloping another short ball over the wide long-on fence before collecting two more fours later in the over. Just three overs into the SRH innings, Warner was on 29 off 10, Mohit’s figures read 0/32 in two. In all he hit 11 fours and a six, before falling to Suresh Raina.

Slow-gun Morgan

When Warner departed — the score reading 86/1 in 8.1 overs — SRH looked all set for a 200-plus total. For, in Eoin Morgan they had the ideal man to do just that in the middle-order. However, not for the first time Morgan failed to live up to that promise. His unbeaten 27-ball 32 did ensure that SRH finished with 192/7.

Wicket-maiden

How do you get rid of Brendon McCullum? It has been a query every team had to face in IPL8. And it looked like Sunrisers had no answers as well, as the destructive Kiwi set about dismantling their attack for the second-time running — he had scored a breath-taking century in their first meeting in Chennai — after he hit three consecutive fours of compatriot Trent Boult. Then Bhuvneshwar Kumar not only dismissed him, he added a cherry on top by bowling a maiden over. He bowled only two deliveries to McCullum though. The first almost carrying to Hanuma Vihari at cover before Kumar shortened his length and had McCullum playing on to his stumps.

captain’s self-goal

It’s not often that a harmless, half-timed straight drive could cause such collateral damage. But by the time Dhoni hit the full-toss from Ashish Reddy straight back at him, he and Faf du Plessis had steadied the ship for CSK, and with the score at 114/3, and eight overs left, had kept them in the game. Dhoni’s shot hit Du Plessis and ricocheted on to the umpire’s foot. The South African set off for a single, but Reddy had the presence of mind to throw the stumps down and break CSK’s momentum. Off the next ball, he broke their back — bowling Dhoni with a back-of-the-hand slower one.

Brief scores: SRH 192/7 in 20 overs (D Warner 61, S Dhawan 37, E Morgan 32; D Bravo 3/25) bt CSK 170/6 in 20 overs (F du Plessis 33, D Bravo 25 n.o, S Raina 23; M Henriques 2/20, B Kumar 2/32)