IPL 2018: Match 1, MI vs CSK - Who Said What

So the Indian Premier League (IPL) has begun finally! It is here to stay and definitely is the best league in the world. The opening encounter was going nowhere with Chennai Super Kings (CSK) losing wickets haplessly in the 166-run chase. Mumbai Indians (MI) were brilliant until Dwayne Bravo came out to turn the tables on them in front of their home crowd. However, his knock coupled with Kedar Jadhav’s brilliance in the last over helped CSK pull off a sensational thriller by just 1 wicket.

After losing the toss, Mumbai Indians got off to a worst possible start as their openers Rohit Sharma and Evin Lewis were sent back quickly by Shane Watson and Deepak Chahar. Though it was the duo of Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan which resurrected the innings for the home side by adding 78 runs for the third wicket. The former lost his wicket to Watson at the crucial juncture even as Kishan was scalped soon. However, it was the cameo from Krunal Pandya which propelled Mumbai to a decent total of 165 runs after 20 overs.

CSK, in response, started slowly courtesy their openers Watson and Ambati Rayudu. But Hardik Pandya bowled beautifully to snaffle the former and the dangerous Suresh Raina which helped MI keep a lid on their run rate. The debutant Mayank Markande took the control of the game and scalped three quick wickets to leave the Men in Yellow reeling at 84/6. But Dwayne Bravo entered the scene and the game changed completely. He took the attack to the bowlers of the opposition and slowly took the game ahead.

However, the killing blow was three sixes off Bumrah in the penultimate over which brought the game ever so close. 20 minutes earlier, nobody would’ve thought that the match would go into the last over forget CSK winning it. Bravo got out off the last ball of the 19th over to make the match more interesting. But Jadhav returned to bat heroically despite being injured and smashed a ramp over fine leg fielder’s head for a six to seal the fate of the game.

Man of the Match, Dwayne Bravo said:

It was a great team effort. Want to dedicate this win to CSK fans. They waited so long for this moment. I’m happy to contribute with a match-winning performance. CSK have shown lot of faith in me. Wanted to give myself the best opportunity to start well.

Have been working a lot on my batting. Here at Wankhede, once you bat deep, chances are you could win the game. It’s a small outfield, ball comes onto the bat. They bowled in my areas. Just happy with the win tonight.

Winning team captain, MS Dhoni said:

I think they missed the competition (on Wankhede fans cheering CSK). CSK-MI is one game that people wait to watch. Support has always been there wherever we’ve played. We’re coming back after two years, that’s also the reason that people are eager to watch us in action. Overall the spectators have been very good.

I’m a practical person, so I was hoping in the dressing room that the quantum of defeat shouldn’t be too big. The idea was – if there’s a chance to win, go for it, but also try to get closer to the target. The way Bravo batted, it was really good to see him take the responsibility. Don’t think we batted well as a team.

But it’s the first game, so we’ll take the positives out of it. Those will be more important for us in the coming games. The kind of players we have got, our selection will be based on horses for courses where we’ll see the wicket and then decide. We’ll also keep an eye for players who are injury prone. We’ll have to keep an eye on lot of things. We have quite a few who can bat and bowl.

Losing team captain, Rohit Sharma said:

Feeling low at the moment, credit to Bravo, he played well, hit the right pockets, there was some dew and that didn’t help us, but they played well. We need to improve our death bowling, we were in the game till the 17th over, the last three overs didn’t go our way, dew isn’t an excuse.

We knew with 165 on the board, we needed to bowl very well, but I think we were 10-15 runs short. Bravo bowled very well in the end, we have got a great bunch of guys, we need to look into the positives and learn from it. Just the first game, it isn’t the end of the world, we will need to learn from this.