By Suneer Chowdhary
Wriddhiman Saha’s unbeaten 46 off 33 and the superb, concerted bowling effort from the likes of R Ashwin and Shadab Jakati won Chennai Super Kings a place in the playoffs with a win over the Kochi Tuskers.
Published: May 18, 2011, 11:32 PM (IST)
Edited: May 18, 2011, 11:32 PM (IST)
Chennai Super Kings qualified for IPL4 play-offs with a win over Kochi Tuskers Kerala © AFP
By Suneer Chowdhary
Chennai: May 18, 2011
Wriddhiman Saha’s unbeaten 46 off 33 and the superb, concerted bowling effort from the likes of R Ashwin and Shadab Jakati won Chennai Super Kings a place in the playoffs with a win over the Kochi Tuskers.
The victory also meant that the home team would go into the playoffs with seven wins from seven games at home.
Chennai’s success formula is worth replicating as a cricketing case-study. They bat first, start slow, build momentum in the middle and invariably find a batsman towards the end of the innings to deliver the acceleration.
And then, with the ball in their hands and in the field, they choke and they throttle and they asphyxiate the opposition till the asking rate has risen to levels from where a win would become improbable.
It wasn’t too different tonight, as the Super Kings notched up their ninth win in the tournament after pushing Kochi out with a 11-run victory. There was of course, a stutter on the way when Dwayne Bravo was hit for 19 in the penultimate over but Doug Bollinger bowled a fine final over to get the Super Kings a playoffs berth.
Chasing 153 for a win, the Kochi Tuskers failed to hold a candle to the aforementioned tactics. They did try to preserve their wickets for a final assault but by the time the slog overs had begun, the target had entered the realms of the impossible.
Parthiv Patel’s horror night continued with the bat. He scored only six and failed to provide the kind of start that would have been useful to chase down this target.
Earlier, in the field, he had dropped Raina off the first ball that that the batsman had faced and then missed two relatively easy stumpings of Wriddhiman Saha and Michael Hussey. Saha’s let-off proved to be a costly one and allowed the Super Kings to get away to the 150-plus score.
Y Gnaneswara Rao joined Brendon McCullum but despite the presence of the Kiwi cricketer, the run-rate did not move too quickly in the desired direction. There were three boundaries hit by each of them but for the rest of the time, they failed to rotate the strike.
Gnaneswara Rao made a 17-ball 19 before falling prey to a Dwayne Bravo-slower ball while McCullum’s 37-ball 33 was ended when his attempted swipe ended up with the ball clattering into the stumps.
By the time Ravindra Jadeja had hit the first six of the innings, the game seemed all over bar the shouting. Hodge did smack Bravo for a couple of sixes in the 19th over of the game, but even after that, the Tuskers needed 19 in the final over to win the game. It was way beyond the Tuskers’ reach.
Earlier, a strange decision to bat Saha ahead of Dhoni and Albie Morkel proved to be a master move as he played a suitably matured innings for the situation and the pitch. His unbeaten 33-ball 46 ensured that the Super Kings got to 152 for five in their 20 overs after a rather sluggish start.
Chennai had won the toss and as has been the captain’s wont throughout the tournament, the side decided to bat first. There was a string of wickets that fell immediately after an intent of aggression was shown by the batsmen and Chennai slumped to 60 for three in the ninth over.
Murali Vijay was bowled off a yorker from RP Singh, Suresh Raina played one shot too many before being caught and S Badrinath was caught brilliantly by RP Singh off Brad Hodge.
Hussey did attempt to get moving in his customary fashion, getting the singles and the twos and then hitting the odd boundary but it was a painstakingly slow effort. He failed to kick on from his 37-ball 32 and Ravindra Jadeja bowled him the best full-toss possible – a wicket-taking one.
It was in the last five overs that Saha’s 33-ball 46 helped the side get 51 runs and propelled the score to 152 for five in the 20 overs.
Brief Scores: CSK 152 for 5 in 20 overs (Wriddhiman Saha 46*, Michael Hussey 32; Ravindra Jadeja 2 for 26, S Sreesanth 1 for 23) bt KTK 141 for 5 in 20 overs (Brad Hodge 51*, Brendon McCullum 33; Ravichandran Ashwin 1 for 16, Shadab Jakati 1 for 23) by 11 runs.
Man of the Match: Wriddhiman Saha
(Suneer is a Mumbai-based cricket writer and can be contacted at suneerchowdhary@gmail.com and Tweets here @suneerchowdhary)
