Rachin Ravindra and Shivam Dube set up CSK’s 206 before their five fast bowlers shut down Gujarat Titans’ chase. The new faces of Chennai Super Kings impressed against the team they took down in the IPL 2023 final, signaling that the post-MS Dhoni era could also be filled with lots of success. Rachin Ravindra (46 off 20), Shivam Dube (51 off 23), Sameer Rizvi (14 off 6) and the captain Ruturaj Gaikwad himself (46 off 36) led them to a total of 206, which proved plenty more than enough for a bowling attack that is also undergoing change.
For the second game running, Chepauk offered no wickets to the home team’s spinners. Instead, it was the fast bowlers led by Deepak Chahar (2 for 28) and Tushar Deshpande (2 for 21) who did all the damage. The times, they are a’changin.
Pitch and Toss
It’s a different pitch tonight. Looks a really good wicket, there was bounce and carry in the first game. There’s a lot of grass on the surface, unusual for a Chepauk pitch. There are a few patches where there’s an uneven covering of grass. The spinners will come into play in the middle overs. It’s a bat-first wicket, reckons Matthew Hayden.
Gujarat Titan skipper Shubman Gill won the toss and elected to bowl first keeping Sai Sudarshan as their impact player. Ruturaj Gaikwad who also wanted to bowl first opted with return from injury comeback pacer Matheesha Pathirana as impact player for injured Maheesh Theekshana.
Rachin Ravindra provides impetus at the top as CSK dominates the powerplay
CSK found someone to keep them going right through the innings. Through the powerplay this role was taken up by Rachin Ravindra who blitzed his way to 47 in a 62-run opening stand with Ruturaj Gaikwad. Ravindra first went after Umesh Yadav’s missed lengths hitting him for a six and a four off consecutive deliveries.
In the following over, he meted out similar treatment to Azmatullah Omarzai. When Yadav opted for slightly shorter lengths next time around, he was still not spared as Ravindra picked up another six and a four. The boundary flow didn’t stop as Omarzai erred similarly next up to be put away promptly. Ravindra’s blitzkrieg came to an unfortunate end when he was out stumped after the ball deflected off his body and close to the wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha.
Rachin is a back-foot player. Yet his drives are the best part of his game. They look so natural. Almost instinctive. This is basically a result of a switch in mindset, which was very apparent at the ODI World Cup, where he gave himself permission to go hard at the ball. Now watching him, there’s almost no bias.
He was straight-driving sixes. He was front-foot pulling boundaries. He was pouncing on rare short balls from Rashid Khan. This was a batter showing off just how early he was picking length and just how good his hand-eye coordination is. He was never out of position. He was never rushed. He never even looked like he was trying. His 46 off 20 balls is already in the Super Kings hall of fame because he hit nine boundaries, the joint-fifth-most by any CSK batter inside the powerplay in all IPL history.
Ajinkya Rahane next up could not keep up with the tone set by Ravindra as he was out stumped after a run-a-ball 12. But Gaikwad had found his groove by now and kept the momentum up with a flurry of boundaries. He raced away to 46 but just as he was looking good for more, Spencer Johnson found an edge from a delivery angled across. But by now, the next of CSK’s hitters Shivam Dube – and the one who had maximum impact – was ready.
Shivam Dube cuts loose and destroys spin
Shivam Dube played his role to a tee as he hit the first two balls he faced – against the favorable match-up of Sai Kishore’s left-arm spin – for sixes. It set him up beautifully for the rest of the innings as he kept upping the ante. Rashid Khan was tonked for a six as well before Johnson was hit for a four and a pulled six as the short ball ploy went for a toss. He brought up his fifty off just 22 balls and looked set for a bigger finish heading into the last couple of overs.
Left-arm spinner Sai Kishore and Rashid Khan were immense in helping Titans shut down Mumbai Indians in their first match of the season. Here they were almost not allowed to finish their full quota of overs. Because Shivam Dube. The first ball of the 11th over resulted in Ajinkya Rahane’s wicket with the score on 104 for 2. The second and third were sent up into orbit by the one of the league’s best spin-hitters.
Shivam Dube’s story might well be the strongest argument in favour of role-clarity in T20 cricket. Here was a power-hitter who had only one fifty from his first 22 IPL innings because teams kept using Shivam Dube as a finisher. Shivam Dube isn’t that, because he is still a work in progress against fast bowling.
All the power he had was going to waste, until CSK came calling in 2022 and decided they’d use him against the slower bowlers; against the kind of people he can just plant that front foot down and use all of his wingspan. Even Rashid wasn’t able to keep Shivam Dube quiet. That’s the quality of his spin-hitting. He has 57 sixes since the switch to yellow and that puts him level with IPL legend Andre Russell and Liam Livingstone and behind only Jos Buttler (59).
Sameer Rizvi rises as CSK posts mammoth 206 for 6 after 20 overs.
Rashid Khan got the better of Dube with a googly early in the 19th over raising Gujarat’s hopes of applying the brakes. However, debutant Sameer Rizvi had other ideas. He hit his first ball in IPL for a six as he slog-swept Rashid and followed it up with a lofted six over long off making sure that it turned into a 15-run over. But Mohit Sharma’s final over went for only eight with Rizvi holing out to long on even as CSK finished with a total over 200, which eventually proved to be more than enough.
At the fall of Dube’s wicket, with less than two overs to go, Chepauk might have expected Dhoni to stride out to the middle. The camera certainly did. It kept panning to him in the dressing room.
Instead, it was 20-year old Rizvi who stepped up. And he swept the first ball that he faced in the IPL for six. That it happened to be Rashid bowling and that he hit him for another six – this one a bit of a mis-hit as he charged out of his crease and swung himself almost off his feet – only added to the occasion. If this is the new CSK, there’s going to be a few more special years ahead.
A chase that goes nowhere for Gujarat Titans as they falter in the powerplay
Gujarat were dependent on getting a good start in the powerplay to pose a challenge in the chase. Both Shubman Gill and Wriddhiman Saha made their intentions clear with Gill even lofting his first ball for a six but neither was able to make it continue for long. Deepak Chahar had Gill lbw with a skidding delivery while Saha holed out to to the deep giving Chahar his second wicket. At 34/2, Gujarat were already put on the backfoot.
Deepak Chahar was finding that his slower ball wasn’t working tonight; that the pitch instead of offering grip only let it slide onto the bat. But Chepauk didn’t totally bail on its team. There was a moment in the third over when a little bit of a low bounce resulted in Shubman GIll’s wicket. He was lbw while playing that front-foot pull shot with an angled bat that usually goes to the boundary.
CSK keep control due to smart catching and tight fielding as Gujarat faltered in middle overs
With the tone set, none of Gujarat’s middle-order batters could do enough to reverse the pressure back. It didn’t help that CSK held onto sharp chances. Veterans MS Dhoni and Ajinkya Rahane each held onto sharp chances while Rachin Ravindra dropped one but held onto three more ensuring that the collective control was never let up right till the end.
More mischief happened as a team that is not really known for their fielding pulled off three incredible catches – Dhoni diving full length to his right to get rid of Vijay Shankar, Ajinkya Rahane running in from midwicket and diving forward to snap up a David Miller helicopter shot at deep midwicket, and Ravindra gobbling up a skier from Azmatullah Omarzai.
Gujarat Titans give up and lose the match by massive 63 runs
The Titans chase never got going. They had only 34 on the board when their openers fell, 114 when their top-scorer Sai Sudarshan fell, and at 129 for 8 they were even in danger of being bowled out. That didn’t happen but this loss was their worst in terms of runs in the IPL.
Chennai Super Kings were clinical with both bat and ball as they completely outplayed Gujarat Titans to register their second win on the trot in IPL 2024. Packed with powerful performances right through with the bat, their bowlers mirrored the collective effort to ensure that Gujarat were never allowed to squeeze their way back in the game, and condemned them to a 63-run loss.
Presentations and Road Ahead.
Shubman Gill the loosing skipper for Gujarat Titans said :
“They outplayed us when we were batting, their execution was spot on. We backed ourselves to get a decent score in the powerplay and once we didn’t, we were always playing catch-up. It was unfortunate for us. In T20 you can always talk about 10-15 runs here or there, end of the day it’s about how much they got. On this wicket, we were expecting to chase 190-200. I think it’s a great learning for the bowlers,”
“I think it’s better to have this kind of game early on in the tournament rather than in the middle or late. We always expected to chase 190-200, it was a really good wicket. Felt like we let ourselves down while batting. (On captaincy) Lot of new learnings, new experiences and different things. It’s exciting to captain a team like Gujarat Titans, we’ve made it to the finals in the last couple of years so very exciting,”
Ruturaj Gaikwad the winning skipper of Chennai Super Kings said :
“Definitely today’s game was perfect – batting, bowling and fielding, and against a team like Gujarat we needed to come up with a performance like this. In Chennai we are not sure how the wicket will be, we need to do well irrespective of batting or bowling first. Here if we have wickets in hand at the end it helps. Personally felt, Rachin batted brilliantly in the powerplay and took the game away,”
“From there we were always ahead. [on Dube] In terms of confidence, the management and Mahi bhai worked with him personally, his confidence is very high. He knows his roles very well. Definitely he is a big plus for us. I’m impressed with the fielding as well. Maybe one or two youngsters we have extra this year and great effort from Jinks, even in the last game he was running from one end to the other. Fielding is a big tick for us,”
Shivam Dube for his fiery half century got Player of the Match said :
“This franchise is different from all others. This franchise is giving me the freedom and I also want to win some matches for them. I worked in that way as well – it is helping me, I know they are going to bowl short balls and I’m ready for that. They want me to go on a higher strike-rate and I want to do that,”
Easy win for CSK. The chase never got going once Gill fell early and it was a stroll in the park for the home side after that. Sai Sudharsan after a start just couldn’t hit the ball to the boundary and CSK just tightened the noose around him. Miller was the dangerman but he fell to a good catch and that was the game done at that stage. The last 6-7 overs was a mere formality as GT never looked like threatening the target.
Chennai play their first ‘away’ game of the season as they travel to Vizag, the temporary ‘home’ for Delhi Capitals this season. On the same day – Sunday, March 31 – Gujarat Titans will go back home to take on Sunrisers Hyderabad.