PBKS defeat CSK by 6 wickets (IPL)IPL 2021, CSK vs PBKS Highlights: KL Rahul’s scintillating 98 steered Punjab Kings to a 6 wicket victory against Chennai Kings on Thursday. Du Plessis’ 76 in the first innings was completely overshadowed as Rahul took just 42 balls to reach 98 in an innings scattered with 7 fours and 8 humongous sixes.
Earlier, Chennai Super Kings suffered a top order collapse, like they had in their last match against Delhi Capitals before a Du Plessis acceleration took them to 134/6.
Faf du Plessis (76) played through the entire innings, even as wickets kept falling at the other end. Punjab’s pacers Mohammed Shami, Arshdeep Singh and Chris Jordan kept pushing CSK on the back foot, not letting the run rate cross 6 for most of the innings, till Du Plessis accelerated in the death overs.
Chennai Super Kings (Playing XI): Ruturaj Gaikwad, Faf du Plessis, Robin Uthappa, Moeen Ali, Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni(w/c), Ravindra Jadeja, Dwayne Bravo, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar, Josh Hazlewood
Punjab Kings (Playing XI): KL Rahul(w/c), Mayank Agarwal, Aiden Markram, Sarfaraz Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Moises Henriques, Chris Jordan, Harpreet Brar, Mohammed Shami, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh
Chennai Super Kings
134/6 (20.0)Punjab Kings
139/4 (13.0)Punjab Kings beat Chennai Super Kings by 6 wickets
And a four in the 5th ball of the 12th over. Just 2 left now. And he hits this to the moon. It's a 6. Rahul finishes at 98. PBKS win by 6 wickets
And Markram is gone but the match is probably already lost. No way Punjab are choking from here. PBKS 126/4 after 12.1 overs
Bravo in the attack. And another 6 from Rahul. He is just relentless tonight. Again and again. They will finish this match in no time. Two sixes off this over already. Rahul has already hit seven sixers in this innings. 20 off that over. PBKS 126/3 after 12 overs.
Effortless from Rahul. Another 6 off the second ball of the 11th over. And 100 comes up in style. Pretty expensive over from Chahar. 14 off it. PBKS 106/3 after 11 overs.
And Bravo gets hit for a 6 by new man Markram. 12 off it. Halfway done. PBKS 92/3 after 10 overs
Poor Sarfraz Khan. Two ducks in a row, now. He had got a beauty in the last game, with Yuzvendra Chahal’s ripping leg break proving too much for the man known for his cheeky shots on and off the field. He had poked at it, and lost his off stump, triggering passionate celebrations from his former IPL captain Virat Kohli. This time around, he fell to another lame poke. It was a scrambled-seam delivery from Shardul Thakur and Khan tried to hurdle it from around off stump to the on-side and the leading edge took it towards mid-off. Standing there was Faf du Plessis who loves to fall while taking catches and he went down to the ground again for this dolly. He got up sheepishly and pointed towards something in the horizon that made him lose sight of the ball, perhaps. Be that as it may, he has spoken in the past on how he likes to fall to the ground while taking aerial catches as he feels it gives him better control over the ball. When Faf falls, he rises with a catch, usually.
Punjab were on the back foot after losing 2 wickets but Rahul and Shahrukh has more or less steadied the ship. And Rahul has hit a 6. No stopping him tonight. And Sharukh is gone. Punjab 80/3 after 9 overs.
KL Rahul had just taken off his helmet after top edging an attempted pull and looked a bit out of sorts. Ambati Rayudu walked up to him and touched a bruise on the forehead, just in case Rahul wasn’t aware of the place of pain perhaps. It was all friendly out there. Not like the time Jeff Thomson walked up to Chetan Chauhan and put a cross on the forehead on the helmet, telling him that nasty bouncers were coming. Chauhan had laughed after top-edging a pull to the boundary (his laughter was an in-context joke for his guffawing team-mates at the balcony) but Thommo took it as an umbrage and warned him. Sunil Gavaskar narrated the story on these pages after the unfortunate demise of Chauhan. “Thommo thought it was a mocking laugh and went, “What the f*** is funny about that shot?” He went across, marked a cross on Chetan’s forehead and said, “that’s where I am going to hit you. Let’s see if you can still laugh after that." As Thommo continued to glare and spray words, Chetan told him, “I am a Rajput, you do what you have to do, you go bowl."
"And I am telling him in Marathi, “Masterr, he doesn’t know what Rajput means! Let it go, don’t lose your concentration.”
No modern-day batsman perhaps has played as many one-handed lofted hits as Dwayne Bravo. There was one in the final over bowled by Mohammed Shami. It was a full toss and Bravo sliced it one handed, the bottom hand coming off the handle, to the cover boundary. Usually, it’s the length ball that he mangles like that. He would lean forward to drive and in an effort to send it up and over extra cover, he would go solo with the top hand. Bravo’s aerial hit over extra cover is as pretty a sight as we have seen in the last couple of decades. Rohit Sharma owns the lofted straight hit to seamers but Bravo sits on the throne of the king of beautiful off-drives.
It was a cat-and-mouse game for a while between Ravi Bishnoi, who specialises in googlies, and MS Dhoni. Perhaps, he was a touch wary about Dhoni charging him or wanted to bowl it away from him to induce an error, some of his early deliveries were well outside off and rather full. And Dhoni was up to that task, slicing and blasting a four. Whenever the ball was on the stumps, Dhoni paid respect. It wasn’t soon that Bishnoi caught on to it and bowled a lovely googly turning in from outside off on a length that wasn’t too full. Dhoni stretched on the front foot and his bat-lift suggested he wanted to belt it but that length and the break-in made him change his mind. He opted for an awkward stab but the ball squeezed in through the bat-and-pad gap to peg back the stumps. Dhoni had laboured along in the last game and was only fluent against full deliveries in this game. Whenever the ball hasn't been on a driveable length, he has searched around for the ball.
Jadeja faces now. Shami has three balls left. CSK have three balls left to redeem their top order's collapse. Jadeja can only get a single. Bravo on strike now. Four!
CSK finish with 134/6. PBKS to chase 135 to win.
A six! Faf is now cracking! The first six of the innings, hit against Arshdeep in the 19th over. Cleanest hit of the innings. Faf's acceleration in the last 2 overs has taken CSK's run rate over 6 for the first time.
Last over now. Shami to bowl. Faf to face. Four to start! Six to follow! Caught out in the third ball. What an innings! Faf is out for 76.
CSK 128/6 after 19.3
Du Plessis gets a bottom edge to go for four, moving into his 40s. Has dropped down several gears as wickets have kept falling at the other end. The acceleration must come from him now. A change of gloves for him. A few runs start coming now, but boundaries still rare. This Faf-Jadeja partnership the highest grossing of the innings now, on 43.
Faf gets to his 50, off 46 balls, in the 18th over. A hard-earned fifty. His 5th of IPL 2021. 100 comes up now for CSK. Faf celebrates with two fours, crashed through midwicket and then down the ground.
CSK 108/5 after 18
Henriques into the attack in the 14th over, Jadeja plays a late cut for four. Faf gets one boundary away as Brar bowls his 4th over, finishes with 0/22. Punjab have 5 overs from their lead pacers left, but it's Bishnoi who continues in the 16th over. He finishes with 1/25.
CSK 86/5 after 16
Dhoni flays Bishnoi through the covers for a four. Then Bishnoi does the CSK skipper in with a googly. Dhoni falls for 12. Jadeja enters at 7. Brar bowls another cheap over.
CSK 66/5 after 13
And the word spreads in the fast-bowling world. For the second successive time Ruturaj Gaikwad has fallen to the bouncer, top-edging a pull. Last time around it was the pacy Anrich Nortje and this time it was the left-arm seamer Arshdeep Singh who bounced it right across Gaikwad, triggering two errors. First, the attempt to fetch it from outside off and dragging it to the on side, and second in the process the bat face turning towards the sky- much like Suresh Raina’s pulls.
Of course, Gaikwad has pulled marvellously in the past to deliveries around chest high but in the last two games the ball has bounced higher and he has succumbed to mistimed pulls. Even in the first over, he was surprised by a Mohammad Shami bouncer; he had tried taking a step down the track and Shami let it rip, and the ball rammed into the gloves and popped behind the stumps on the leg side. Going by the way he has played so far, one can assume that he will course-correct but for the rest of the IPL, the fast bowlers will have a go at him early on.
Dhoni is in early again, in the 9th over, with CSK tottering again. Off the mark with a push to third man. Steps out of his crease off his 2nd ball, crashes a four to third man. Dhoni's helmet is off. Comes out of his crease again, this time to block. Faf now gets another boundary. 9 runs in the over, CSK's best over in a while. It's followed by a 1-run over, bowled by Brar.
CSK 55/4 after 11
Another great catch in the deep! Jordan now takes a 2nd wicket. Rayudu's stay ends up being a short one too. Gone for 4. Faf keeps running out of partners.
CSK 42/4 after 8.3
Now Jordan strikes! Uthappa's stay is a short one too. A top edge is grabbed at midwicket. Gone for 2. Rayudu in at 5. At this rate, RCB will be licking their lips in anticipation of a top-two finish, and PBKS might just continue to hope...
CSK 32/3 after 6.5
Shami giving nothing away in his opening spell. 0/6 in his first 3 overs. Arshdeep now back for his 2nd over, and finally Faf gets some shots going. Two overpitched deliveries driven for boundaries. Gone now! Moeen Ali is caught behind! Gone for a 6-ball duck! Arshdeep's 2nd wicket! Danny Morrison thinks the away going shape is like Wasim Akram's.
CSK 29/2 after 5.4
Arshdeep Singh now reaps the reward in the 4th over. Extra bounce does Gaikwad in again. Top edges a pull shot, caught in the inner circle. Gone for 12. Faf, yet to get in his groove, is joined by Moeen.
CSK 19/1 after 4
Harpreet Brar's left arm spin for the 2nd over. Gaikwad goes aerial - four! 8 runs off the over. Shami then comes back to bowls another great over. Du Plessis tries to break the shackles, almost holes out at third man.
CSK 13/0 after 3
Here's what Dhoni said when asked if he will be playing for CSK in IPL 2022:
'You can see me in yellow, but whether I'll be playing for CSK there are a lot of uncertainties around it for a simple reason that we have two new teams coming up. We don't know the retention policy. We don't know how many foreigners, Indian players we can retain, the money cap that every player will be cutting from the kitty. So there are a lot of uncertainties. Unless the rules are in place you can't really decide that. So we will wait for it to happen and hopefully it will be good for everyone.'
Faf and Ruturaj open the innings for CSK, getting off the mark with singles. Shami bowls the first over for Punjab. Cramps up Gaikwad in particular with his pace and bounce.
CSK 3/0 after 1
PBKS win toss, elect to field first
Chennai Super Kings (Playing XI): Ruturaj Gaikwad, Faf du Plessis, Robin Uthappa, Moeen Ali, Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni(w/c), Ravindra Jadeja, Dwayne Bravo, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar, Josh Hazlewood
Punjab Kings (Playing XI): KL Rahul(w/c), Mayank Agarwal, Aiden Markram, Sarfaraz Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Moises Henriques, Chris Jordan, Harpreet Brar, Mohammed Shami, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh
If CSK lose today, and RCB win by a decent margin tomorrow, RCB will have replaced CSK in Qualifier 1. CSK have spent most of the season at the top of the table, and will be looking to ensure they do not lose their grasp on a spot in the Qualifier 1. PBKS need to win by a big margin and hope both KKR and MI lose their matches.
Toss and teams out at 3 pm IST
Chennai Super Kings (CSK) cannot rest on their laurels in their last league match of IPL 2021, needing a win to ensure a top-two finish, as they face Punjab Kings (PBKS), who will be looking for a miracle to qualify for the playoffs.