Saturday, 10 April 2010

A Poor Performance by CSK

Chennai Super Kings have only them self to blame for today's defeat. None of the batsman other than Raina took charge. A very poor batting performance. Ashwin's fine bowling brought the game on even cards, only lost by the team's selection of Thushara ahead of Murali. 


Positives:
1. Ashwin: Wonderful performance by him. His four overs gave the team a glimmer of hope of winning the game.


Negatives:
1. Hayden: His performance this IPL has not been good this year. Except for that one match against Delhi Daredevils, he has never got going for the team. 
2. Team Selection: They got away with dropping Murali once. But today's match clearly showed why Murali should never have been dropped
3. Dhoni & Hussey: One of these experienced batsmen should have stayed on. 


With this loss, the team find itself in a position to win the rest of the games to qualify for the semi-finals.  

20 comments:

Vivekh said...

Poor Performance in batting except raina...Yes murali should have been played today....this pitch suits for spinners..I dont know why dhoni dropped him...

Reshma said...

It was one of those off days where u pick the fielders all the time. Like Dhoni said the pitch eased out a bit under lights. No taking away credits from DC (they played really well)

Looking at the positives
- CSK didnt loose out a lot on NRR thanks to tight bowling and fielding
- Ashwin's bowling a revelation esp. his carrom ball
- Like i have said repeatedly before, the side is not balanced without Morkel and batting looks very weak. This affects the mindset of top order players who have to be cautious of the weak lower middle order. We need to have Kemp/Morkel back for Hussey/Thushara. Thushara at best is a good performer, he is by no means a match winner. With Kemp back we will have the slow medium option which we sorely missed today.

I think this loss should do as some good and will help us field our best combination for the next couple of matches.

Murali said...

CSK team is so inconsistent, after all our prayers, if they do manage to reach Semis, its just a matter of one more game, before they are knocked out of the tournament.

Batting is CSK strength. Without that they cant win matches. 138 is too low a score to defend.

-ves
Dhoni not in good touch.
Hayden seem to be trying all sort of things except that one thing hes expected to, a match winning knock
Batting line-up is too weak, if our top-3 gets out within 70 runs, then our opponents had won half of the game.

Dhoni,Hussey and Hayden had to perform big way to see CSK through to semis..

We need to win all 3 out of 3.

Danesh said...

Appalling batting from CSK. With a score like 138, it was very difficult to sit for the second half.

Major culprits:

#1 Hussey: should be replaced with Morkel/Kemp

#2 Dhoni: He has really been struggling through out the tournament except for a few innings. He should definitely come lower down the order below Morkel.

And there is no way Murali should sit on the bench for Thushara or Hussey.

Deva.R said...

after raina fell, there's no one to defend the fort..

Morkel was missed big time.. atleast 30 to 40 runs he could have added after 15th over.,

Robin said...

@ Murali,

Please don't write the team off. They have it in them to bounce back with 3 wins. But for that to happen, they have to pick the best XI.

Morkel & Murali for Hussey and Thushara.

true csk fan said...

Dhoni comes to form only when
1) openers give good platform
2) somebody sharing the rungetting at other end
3)mainly when there is no pressure..

Ihav watched almost all CSK matches in IPL 1,2 3 so far and am afraid the REALITY is coming to light Dhoni....wake up..if u wanna last..

RD said...

Dhoni tries to play T20 like ODI. He is predetermined to take only singles (and misses even that on several balls) showing a dead bat even to half volleys. Unless a four or six is scored every over, pressure in the end overs is too high to keep hitting many of them. A more consistent hitting through the 20 overs will relieve pressure on the unfortunate souls like badri who just cant do any power hitting and depend only on luck to get streaky boundaries. Clearly Hussey is not in form and should not be part of the next 3 crucial games. Morkel should be in for him. Hayden is also out of form but there arent too many options to replace him. Clearly Thushara has to be replaced by Murali. So its got to be Hayden, Vijay, Raina, Badri (inspite of insipid batting), Dhoni, Morkel, Murali,Bollinger, Jakati, Tyagi, Ashwin/or a local batsmen.

Siddharth said...

Bring on Albie and Murali for the next match for Hussey and Thushara

And also a local batsman for Ashwin/Jakati

Anonymous said...

i think dhoni is in a mood to move to a new ipl team. he's not playing upto his standards.

Chris Ray said...

I fully agree with RD. Dhoni is an over rated T20 player. Frankly his contribution to the team is nowhere close to where you expect it to be, given the top dollars these guys are paid. Rajasthan on the other hand have have turned ordinary players into performers. Hayden and Dhoni, who were supposed to be the back bone of our batting line up seem to have totally fizzled out. The only positive is that local lads are now standing up and being counted. If only Murali curtails his instinct to dart off like a frightened hare for runs, he could do more for the team. Hussey has played two matches and is not able even put bat to ball. There is no point in blaming Thushara or any other bowler. It was a credit to the bowlers who took the game to the last over. Even against RR we might have won the match but the victory was as good as defeat. We should have at least won it by a huge margin but we did not. If Dhoni and Hayden cannot play consistently how can we ever hope to get anywhere. Clearly if you look at the strike rates and averages it is clear that Dhoni is the worst performer. I guess he should probably drop himself if he cannot come up with a good performance. What does is matter who plays if we are going to lose anyways. At least we could try out some new combination. Clearly the top guns are just firing blanks. The lions have not roared. If you want to hear lions squeak come and watch CSK play. They wont be in the semis simply because they dont deserve to be.

Yeskay said...

Gosh wats with MSD? 7 out of 13 deliveries is unpardonable..he should have been the finisher..stayin till the end.

Hussey also looking a bit off colour.

Dhoni is not of the kind who nudges singles for too long, I wonder why he gets into the mindset.

Not much tinkering with the team to be done, xcept the fact we missed Murali.

Hope to see them come full force in Chennai.

harry said...

its a known fact that Dhoni and hayden are not in the best of form and its upto Vijay or Raina to hit a huge score every match. Thus we know that our middle order is so weak that we might need to strengthen it.

Badri has been a huge dissapointmnet this season and leaving apart shuffling across the off stump and glancing it to fine leg or dilscooping it out there badri just does not have any shots to boast of. We have to admit that there is lack of talent and thushara though a good bowler we cannot expect a quickfire 20 from him. So there has to be 4 changes in the team.

badani for badri
Morkel for Hussey
Murali for Thushara
Ganapathy for Tyagi

badani can roll his arm so can raina

we would have two real good bowlers in bollinger and murali

can count on either ashwin or jakati to do a good one..

morkel/ganapathy/raina/badani should do some.

agree we have a 4th and 5th bowler problem , but batting seems to be a bigger worry... need to bolster it.

Cub said...

team still has quality to advance to SF. Today's results were kind to us. Hope KXP win all except agains CSK

I change my mind regarding Hussey. Like MSD said, best team need not necessarily be the best combination. Albie in place of Hussey seems more logical.

I am in two minds about taking out thushara. he has proven good and ashwin+jakati seems to have stepped up, so difficult choice.. maybe bring in kemp too instead of thushara if he is fit.

Cub said...

@harry, problem with slotting in badani is it loads the batting order with lefties except vijay. maybe use a ganpa/anirudha instead of badri (i dont know if anirudha is a leftie or not)

Murali said...

Badrinath's place can be tried with some Big hitters from bench(Anirudh, Mukund, Badani).

Hussey had to wakeup, otherwise Morkel can come in place of him. Murali had to come back in place of Thushara.

Hayden had to play his natural game, he is now trying to do out of the box things and end up getting out after a decent start.
We need a big innings from him.

Bollinger's Initial overs could get us the breakthrough with both Gayle and Ganguly having similiar weakness (http://www.cricinfo.com/ausvwi09/content/story/447378.html)

Then the spin Trio, with our experienced Murali can defintely restrict Kolkata to a very low score or even bowl them out.

Murali said...

Its not a bad idea infact to try Morkel for Murali/Thushara, kind of adds depth to the batting. But its gamble, on our good day with the bat we dont require a no5 or no6 to come and perform.

Paul C said...

i don't think it would be a bad decision to go with three spinners. taken the last 3 encounters into account, spinners have fared well except for raina. And pace bowlers have not done well in the depth overs. so it would be nice if ashwin, jakati and murali along with murali and tyagi/balaji could handle the bowling department. it would help CSK to control the firing or Gayle and Mccullum under lights...Badri definitely needs to be replaced with some one..even tyagi can get those 2 fluke boundaries at thirdman :)

AGA said...

I know many CSK fans dont want Parthiv in the eleven. But i think given the scenario now he could do better then badri in the middle order. Badani would be the other choice but he should have been given a game earlier. however experienced, coming into a crunch game with little match practice is going to be tough. yeah, Hussey should be dropped for Morkel. Morkel adds a bowling option. Murali should come in for tushara. Tyagi & Ashwin should stay.

Reshma said...

What many people (Dhoni bashers) miss here is the fact that Dhoni was crucial in us playing decently in the first few matches and he was also instrumental in the KKR and MI wins we had. His captaincy is underrated and any impartial observer can clearly see that CSK only has 7-8 quality players and rest just make up the numbers. I still back CSK to reach the semis because of the the sheer quality of the top players in CSK.

Ashwin/Jakati are pretty good spinners and we should back bring in Kemp (a slow medium bowler who took wickets against KKR, if you remember) and Morkel (especially after the innings against RR) for Thushara and Hussey.

This is the best (and most balanced) team we have on paper.

If Dhoni is a little adventurous, he should maybe bring Anirudha/Badani for Badrinath/Tyagi. If Tyagi (a man who has no bowling variations) gets picked as a bowler and only bowls 1 over, then there is a serious selection problem (a slow pitch is no excuse).

I would rather get an additional batsman and bowl a part-timer instead of a bowler like Tyagi.

It was just an off-day for CSK and nothing was going our way and we still pushed DC to the last over.
Dhoni is street smart and I expect CSK to win against KKR and DD at home comfortably and make it to the SFs. From there, it is anybody's game.