Sunday, 18 April 2010

Chennai Super Kings' Quarterfinals

After the disastrous first half, most of the cricket experts wrote off Chennai Super Kings. But the team has proved naysayers wrong by just hanging onto the tournament. 
Tomorrow match is a quarterfinal match for the team. Win the match and then play DD Vs DC winner in the semifinals. Lose the match and be knocked out of the tournament. 

Add to this mixture,  shameful loss to KXIP in Chennai. A win in that match would have ensured the semifinal spot for CSK by now. But as the fate would have been, the team has to win the game tomorrow to qualify for the semis. 



CSK My XI
1. Hayden 2. Vijay 3. Raina 4. Hussey 5. Dhoni 6. Albie 7. Badri 8. Jakati 9. Ashwin 10. Dougie 11. Tyagi

Why i prefer Fleming to drop Murali?
As the last match showed, the pitch has a lot of grass in it. Showed it is more pace friendly than spinner friendly. Playing more than 2  Spinners would be a huge mistake in this pitch. 

Why i prefer Hussey?
In the track that favors pace bowlers and has a lot of bounce, it is better to have an additional Australian batsman. 


Punjab Probable XI:
1. DPMD Jayawardene 2. SE Marsh 3. KC Sangakkara 4. Yuvraj Singh 5. IK Pathan 6. K Goel 7. J Theron 8. RS Sodhi 9. PP Chawla 10. SJ Srivastava 11. VS Malik

Most Dangerous Players:
1. Jayawardene: Renaissance of KXIP was built on his performance. CSK has to get him cheaply. 
2. Marsh: He has not able to recreate his form of IPL Season 1. But he would be hoping to end this IPL with a bang so that KXIP retains him for the next season. 

Favorites: My faith is on Dhoni. 

7 comments:

Murali said...

The biggest threat for our semifinal hopes is the weather in Dharmasala. I just checked the weather forecast. There is 30% chance of rain.

I hope the weather too is as inconsistent as our CSK team, not to rain for that day.

Regarding the team selection is concerned, I dont think its a good idea to bring any new players into the team at this point of the tournament. So Badani/Mukund is not a good option though Balaji and Gony should be given a free holiday trip for next one week to Hawaii. So they dont be part of the team anymore. Tyagi is defintely a better option than our Bouncer Balaji. I think Haydon is still not a bad option at the top. Becos his presence kind of helps Vijay in the sense that the opposition is more focussed and worried about Hayden coming back to form. I think he should play a cameo, like 30 rums in 15 balls kind of innings if not a match winning knock.

Hussey is under pressure to perform may be the pressure could bring back his form. I would still go with him.

CSK's strength is batting, If we had to win any match it is going to be primarily with our batting.

I would stick with the same team that lost to DD except Tyagi in place of Balaji.

But please let the coach review the nature(bounce and turn) of the pitch as every over is bowled, not just to show his worried face to the camera.

Fleming had to be very precise in judging whats a winning score in that pitch and let our batsmen play accordingly.

We lost the match with DD only becos our top batsmen were aiming for 180+ on a pitch which 150 is hard to score and finally ended up scoring 110+.

Reshma said...

Expect Murali to play this match as he got Sanga and Jayawardene in the previous match we played.

Whatever team it is, we will have to catch everything and cash in on the low quality bowling on offer. Piyush Chawla picked up an injury in the last stages of the previous match, hopefully he should be out for this inconsequential match !

CSK has consistently bowled well in the last few matches and I hope they continue this form.

Siddharth said...

get the top 4 batsmen out as soon as possible

after that their batting line up is relatively weak and inexperienced

and negate piyush chawla and theron, the other bowlers arent much of a threat..

Yeskay said...

We keep saying we are batting heavy and i guess we won as may matches by good bowling than batting:)

And I have no clue why MSD said a lot depends on how DC plays in the next matches when eh needs to win this and CSK is thru.

All due respect to Dhoni, who i believe is the best man on the job, he does get a little indifferent and obtuse at times.

I wish he showed some spirit of Dada, whos been prolific in this IPL.

Yeskay said...

I was looking at the highlights -CSK -DD, while it was embarrasing to see our celebrated batting side collapse, I was impressed by the way we bolwed and fought back, great catching. We really fell 20 runs short, it would have been a close match, plus we may have missed Murali.

If Murali is in, then it bcomes murali, Douggie, Hayden and Albie.

They can go with Tyagi for Jakati.

I really believe the 2 big aussie guns- Hayden and Gilly(for DC) havent fired at all, but both are big match players.

So keeping fingers crossed.

Hayden for his poor form and feeling inadequate in the side, teh catch/blinder he took off Douggie to get Viru out seemed priceless.

Unfortunately we couldnt capitalise on it.

One thing CSK has been doing much better than IPL 2 is better fielding, more so with M Vijay and Douggie being new additions.

Murali said...

Weather not looking that bad in Dharmasala. http://www.accuweather.com/world-index-forecast.asp?loccode=ASI%7CIN%7CIN014%7CDHARAMSALA

Cub said...

MS MS MS MS .....


enough said. This guys is priceless. Lets just enjoy the moment.. more comments later