Chennai Super Kings began their new home venue with a dominating win over Rajasthan Royals at the MCA Stadium, Pune. The chief architect of Chennai’s win tonight was Shane Watson who scored his 4th T20 century to get CSK into a winning position. Rajasthan could not chase the total of 204 and fell short by 64 runs to succumb to another loss.
The turning point of the match arrived early in the first innings of the match. Chennai Super Kings, as usual, opened the innings with Shane Watson and Ambati Rayudu. They began in an exhilarating fashion as they collected 14 runs from the first over of Stuart Binny.
After the dismal performance of Dhawal Kulkarni in the first few matches, Rajasthan Royals decided to do away with him and brought in Stuart Binny for the first time this season. The first ball bowled from Binny was a no-ball. Watson received the free-hit and made a full use of it.
Watson smacked Binny then for consecutive fours. Next two balls by Binny were dot balls slowly building pressure on Watson. The fifth ball of the over was the match-changing one. Rahul Tripathi was the culprit for that sin.
Binny bowled one full delivery outside off, Watson tried to drive it, the outswing brought an edge from Watson and the ball went straight to Rahul Tripathi at the first slip. He failed to collect the ball cleanly and dropped the sitter.
Since then, Watson gave no chance to the men in blue and cruised to knock of 106 runs from 57 balls. The total from CSK was too high for Rajasthan Royals to cross and they ultimately fell short by a huge margin.
