The flamboyant English all-rounder, Ben Stokes has criticized the slow track at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai and hoped that teams competing in the IPL do not end up regularly scraping to low scores because of wickets that are “trash”. Stokes, whose IPL stint with Rajasthan Royals (RR) was cut short by a fractured finger, reckons that a T20 game can only be enjoyable with the score is in the range of 160 to 170.
Tweeting about the same after Mumbai Indians painstakingly reached 131 for 6 which was chased down by Punjab Kings, Ben Stokes wrote: “Hope the wickets don’t get worse as the IPL gets deeper into the tournament..160/170 minimum not scraping to 130/140 cause the wickets are trash.”
Hope the wickets don’t get worse as the @IPL gets deeper into the tournament..160/170 minimum not scraping to 130/140 cause the wickets are trash..
— Ben Stokes (@benstokes38) April 23, 2021
Till Friday, as many as 9 IPL 2021 games were played in Chennai, and only twice has the team batting first scored more than 180.
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Once, it was Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) which managed to reach the huge score of 204 against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and the other time was KKR amassing the score of 187 against SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH).
Otherwise, any score in the range of 145 to 150 was looking good enough for the team to defend. Chennai will host its last IPL game of the season on Sunday when Delhi Capitals will be locking horns with the SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) before the caravan shifts to Ahmedabad and New Delhi.
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PBKS registered a 9-wicket win over the defending champions by 9 wickets to end their three-match losing streak in the IPL 2021. After winning the toss and KL Rahul asked MI to bat first, and ever since, Punjab did nothing wrong. Overall, the 5-time champions have now lost three out of their 5 matches this season. On a slow and sticky Chennai wicket, Ravi Bishnoi, Mohammed Shami, Rahul, and Chris Gayle found the perfect solution to take their team over the line.
