Rajasthan Royals are playing good cricket in the Indian Premier League 2019 but somewhere the luck is not favouring them. They lost two out of two matches before the game against Chennai Super Kings where they lost the game at a crucial juncture. The same thing happened in Chennai, where they were close to winning the game but last nervy moments didn’t go in their favour.
CSK was batting first on a typical Chennai surface and got off to a horrible start. They lost three wickets inside the powerplay. But Suresh Raina and captain MS Dhoni came to rescue them and take their innings to 175/5 in 20 overs. Rajasthan was nowhere in the chase but some heroics towards the end brew a life in a rather one-sided game. But eventually, Chennai came at the top and won the game by eight runs.
Also Read: Who will be the X factor for CSK in IPL 2019?
Dhoni – the man at the rescue
Chennai’s skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni came to the crease when Kedar Jadhav got out in the fifth over. He shared a crucial 61-run stand with Suresh Raina to revive CSK’s innings. He turned his beast mode on in the death overs and punished all Rajasthan bowlers. He scored an unbeaten 75 runs in just 46 balls, where he hit four fours and four sixes. He finished the innings with three back-to-back sixes and gave Chennai a score to fight.
Deadly Assault at death
Rajasthan’s death bowling was poor and conceded too many runs to allow CSK a comeback in the game. MS Dhoni was at the crease and RR bowlers were giving some freebies to a finisher of Dhoni’s stature. Chennai scored as many as 60 runs in just last three overs, which helped CSK to post a par score of 175/5 on a sluggish Chennai pitch. 28 runs came of Jaydev Unadkat’s past over, where Dhoni hit three consecutive sixes to finish the innings off in style.
Also Read: Who will be the X factor for RR in IPL 2019?
Rajasthan’s top-order fell cheaply
RR was chasing a big total of 176 and got off to the worst possible start. They lost their skipper Ajinkya Rahane on the second ball of the innings. Deepak Chahar was the bowler to dismiss him. Jos Buttler and Sanju Samson tried to resist and calm the things down. But they didn’t survive and fell off successive delivery. While Chahar dismissed Sanju Samson on the last ball of his second over, Shardul Thakur got better of Buttler on the very next ball. Thus, RR was reduced to 14/3 in a big run-chase.
