KKR suffered a close 2-wicket defeat against CSK as they failed to defend the target of 180 at Eden Gardens, which almost ended their playoff chances. CSK tasted victory after a long time in this tournament, with the help of youngsters and MS Dhoni’s magic in the last, something for their fans to celebrate.
Poor bowling strategies by KKR
KKR made many poor choices in bowling. CSK batters played with a nothing-to-lose attitude and went for the shots right from ball one. As a result, they lost wickets at frequent intervals in the powerplay. Debutant Urvil Patel was very impressive. He set the tone for the chase with his destructive cameo of 31(11) with 4 sixes.
They finished the powerplay with 62 runs, but lost 5 wickets. KKR had an upper hand in the game at that time. From there, Shivam Dube and Dewald Brevis built a partnership. Brevis boldly attacked their best spinner Sunil Narine. Narine had a bad day with the ball.
CSK were 93/5 after 10 overs. Vaibhav Arora came to bowl the 11th over and Dewald Brevis was in strike. He tried to nail the stump line yorker, but missed it in every attempt, got smashed for boundaries. With 3 fours and 3 sixes, Brevis scored 30 runs of that over.
This changed the momentum completely, and it reduced the required run rate as CSK doesn’t need to take much risk after that. But, Brevis went for the lofted in the first ball of the 13th over by Varun Chakravarthy and was caught at long on by Rinku Singh.
CSK’s score was 127/6 in 12.1 overs at that time. MS Dhoni walked in. That was Varun’s last over, and KKR had one more over of Narine. MS Dhoni survived Varun’s spell. Rahane immediately bought Narine on the next over. Since the required run rate is not too high, Dhoni played the safe game and survived that over.
Ajinkya Rahane could have held the Narine’s over for the death. Because it was the last recognized batting pair for CSK, and he knew they wouldn’t take unnecessary risks and take the game deeper. Narine bowling in the death when the equation was 18 off 12 would have been more relevant, as Dhoni would be under pressure to take chances.
Moeen Ali could have been given one over against Dube and Dhoni, as there is a good amount of turn in the pitch. They finished both Narine and Varun by the end of the 14th over and operated the rest of the overs with fast bowlers, so both the batters played comfortably, with Dube taking calculative risks.
KKR fast bowlers didn’t try to test Dube with short balls angling into the body. One feary bouncer would have affected the momentum of the batter. They were keep on trying to attack the stumps with Yorkers, when they miss it by few meters, it became a slot ball and Dube punished it.
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