Wednesday, 27 April 2011

Another Clinical Display earns the first away win!!

Scorecard: Chennai Super Kings 145 for 2 (Badrinath 63*) beat Pune Warriors 141 for 6 (Yuvraj 62*, Bollinger 3-21) by eight wickets 

All-round clinical performance from the team!!! Dougie & Badri were the stand-out players and set up a beautiful win for CSK. Now Chennai Super Kings can relax until Sunday - thansk to back-to-back wins and knowing that they have established them self as a contender for the top four slot. Also it is time that CSK started aiming for No:2 spot - to give them self that extra match to get into the finals.

Positives:
1. Dougie: Another great performance. Superstar of CSK Bowling Unit.
2. Badri: Without making noise, Badri is staking claim for the highest run-scorer in this IPL. Produced a beautiful innings today and rewarded the team management for sending him at No:3. Hope he produces more such innings for CSK.
3. Raina: Nice to see him spend some time in the innings. He is bound to back to his IPL form soon. 

Negatives
1. Selection of Kulasekara: I was flummoxed by the selection of Kulasekara as an all-rounder in the team. If Albie is injured, the team requires to pick either Faf or Styris (who can bowl 2-3 overs. Raina can contribute the rest). I would have preferred Yo Mahesh/Tyagi, Faf, Tim Southee to come in the place of Jakati, Albie and Randiv in this match. Thanks to Badri's innings, CSK did not have to deal with the weak lower order. Hope the team does not repeat this mistake if Albie is still injured for the next match.

Fan's Man of the Match: Dougie - For the great bowling, that helped CSK to dominate the match.

After seeing Ishant's performance today, how do you rate CSK's chances against Deccan Chargers?

7 comments:

Danesh said...

Great win! I thought Badri should have got the Man of the Match for his cool innings. He seems to be in the form of his life.

Ishant's performance has been outstanding - very dream like but do not know if it is repeatable

Robin said...

@Danesh,
Badri played well. But it was Dougie who set up the win... Pune Warriors were always 15 runs short.

Yeah.. But Hussey & Vijay should handle Steyn & Ishant well on Sunday.

Sarathy said...

Excellent innings from Badri and good show by the bowlers. Now we know what bowling combo works for us in home and away matches.3 spinners in home games and 3 seamers in away games is the way to go.Coming back to batting ,all our bighitters(Raina,Dhoni,Vijay and Morkel) are due for runs.But this should not be a cause of concern as I expect them to get their form back in crunch matches.

Sarathy said...

How do we tackle DC bowling.?Simple..
No wickets to Steyn and Ishant in their first spell. If an early wicket goes down Badri will be sent in to hold fort. MS will control the middle overs with Raina and Badri .
We will Launch an attack on all bowlers with wickets in Hand starting from over number 14 or 15..

Senz said...

Very good win. Morale boosting and calming the nerves. Two consecutive home matches against relatively weaker teams should be a breather. Kulasekara did well at teh start I thought, although Styris hasnt got enough opportunities. Faf's legbreaks will always be a risk in this format though his batting is a plus. Lets try not to keep second guessing the team management everytime.
As for Ishant and DC bowling, while it was great to watch, it was the pitch that aided. See the scorecard on bothsides-Sanga's innings was the difference. At chepauk for sure not much to worry if we can handle Steyn who adapts better to any pitch. Vijay and Raina should be prepared for the bouncer test though from all their quickies.

Kriz said...

Yes.. a very much needed victory indeed.

Out of the 7 matches we still have, 4 will be in home and 3 will be away.

As the kings are very much stronger in home ground, those 4 will definitely be ours.

Out of the 3 away matches if we are able to clear atleast 1 match, it will cement our place in the top 4 list.

Come on CSK.. Keep rocking...

darth vader said...

Well it was a reasonable win but Pune has lost another one against RCB which makes them probably the weakest team in this edition, losing 5 consecutive matches. We have traditionally done poorly against DC and RR. CSK really needs some impetus in the opening overs. Sometimes Hussey seems to be playing with a bat made of granite and Vijay seems unable to summon his big shots. His strike rate has come down the last few matches. The first few overs resemble a test match when CSK is batting. We really need some big hitting in the opening overs especially when chasing big totals. There are no easy matches and we should not expect any. Also we need to get some big wins under our belt so that we are not edged out on run rate.