Chennai Super Kings and Sunrisers Hyderabad are playing in the 44th match of the Indian Premier League 2021 in Sharjah. Both teams are sitting on the different ends of the spectrum in the points table with CSK being at the top of the pile while SRH are relishing at the bottom.
MS Dhoni won the toss and opted to bowl first while taking the small dimensions of the Sharjah ground into consideration. Dwayne Bravo is back in the playing XI replacing Sam Curran. Kane Williamson, on the other hand, named an unchanged playing XI.
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Wriddhiman Saha and Jason Roy came out to open the batting for SRH. Both players started their innings cautiously and didn’t take early risks against Deepak Chahar and Josh Hazlewood in particular.
Jason Roy, the last match’s protagonist for SRH, failed and got out after scoring just 2 runs. Kane Williamson, too, failed to replicate his last match’s performance. Wriddhiman Saha held one end tight but he didn’t get any assistance from his teammates before eventually getting out for 44 in 46 balls.
SRH huffed and puffed to manage 134 runs on the board. Hazlewood bagged three wickets for 24 runs in his four overs.
In response, CSK followed the same script as Ruturaj Gaikwad and Faf du Plessis took their team to a flying start. Gaikwad played some aggressive shots and added 75 runs for the opening wicket. Jason Holder dismissed him for 45 runs but the game was already lost from SRH’s perspective.
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Moeen Ali scored run-a-ball 17 runs before Rashid Khan clean bowled him. Suresh Raina and Faf du Plessis, then, got out in the same over. Ambati Rayudu and MS Dhoni, however, kept their cool and finished the match with six wickets in hand. With this win, CSK becomes the first team to qualify for the playoffs while SRH are now officially eliminated out of the IPL 2021.
See how Twitter reacted to this game;
Dhoni and a six to finish. The story isn't over yet…..
— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) September 30, 2021
Chennai Super Kings in the last four of an #IPL edition for the 11th time out of 12 attempts, the most by any side!
The only time they couldn't do so was in 2020 (finished 7th). And of course, #CSK did not participate in 2016 & 2017.#IPL2021 #IPLinUAE#CSKvsSRH #SRHvCSK— Mohandas Menon (@mohanstatsman) September 30, 2021
How many of you think #csk will win #IPL2021 and why ?
— Ridhima Pathak (@PathakRidhima) September 30, 2021
Dhoni finishes match with 6 but #CSK surprisingly made heavy weather of chasing modest target. After a rousing start middle order showed shortcomings which won’t have been lost on opponents. Nevertheless, this win will see CSk finishing 1 or 2 on points table, which is huge
— Cricketwallah (@cricketwallah) September 30, 2021
Vintage #csk and Qualifying to play offs. Good old story!
— Irfan Pathan (@IrfanPathan) September 30, 2021
This feeling called #CSk❤️✌🏽
— Murali Vijay (@mvj888) September 30, 2021
Good old times. Good effort by the SunRisers to make a match out of it but Dhoni finishes off in style and Chennai qualify for the play-offs for the 11th time in 12 seasons. Outstanding #CSKvsSRH
— Venkatesh Prasad (@venkateshprasad) September 30, 2021