IPL 2018: Match 35, CSK vs RCB - Who Said What

Chennai Super Kings (CSK) are back to the top of the table with a resounding win over Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in Pune. The visitors never arrived at the game as their batsmen put on a dismal show after being invited to bat first. Parthiv Patel was the best batsman for them who announced himself this season with a brilliant half-century to score 53 runs. But the remainder of the batting line-up collapsed spectacularly as Ravindra Jadeja and Harbhajan Singh shared 5 wickets between them.

Virat Kohli was castled by Jadeja while AB de Villiers needlessly tried the reverse sweep off Bhajji only to get stumped. RCB never recovered from those blows as the likes of Mandeep Singh and Colin de Grandhomme also lost their wickets while going for runs. It was due to Tim Southee’s heroic knock of 36 runs which propelled them to a total of 127 runs for the loss of 9 wickets. But the score was never going to be enough to defend against the strong line-up of CSK and once again stood like a rock for them in the middle.

Shane Watson was castled with a superb delivery by Umesh Yadav even as Suresh Raina was undone by the brilliance of Southee at the boundary. Soon, the wickets of Dhruv Shorey and Ambati Rayudu fell to make the game interesting and the pressure increased on the home side. The skipper MS Dhoni absorbed all the pressure after coming in to bat and made sure that he didn’t give away his wicket. Meanwhile, Dwayne Bravo was dropped twice by RCB which didn’t help their cause.

Though they needed 39 off the last 5 overs the duo batted cleverly and when Yuzvendra Chahal was handed over the ball by Kohli, Dhoni sensed an opportunity and finished the game. He smacked the leggie for three massive sixes and finished the game in the 18th over itself as the Men in Yellow were back to where they belong at the top of the points table.

Man of the Match, Ravindra Jadeja said:

It’s good to get MoM awards in a T20 game. Very happy with the way I bowled today. The wicket was a bit dry, the ball was holding a bit, I was looking to bowl in the right areas and not give them width.

Bhajji also bowled very well, together, we tried not to give them too many runs. Overall, I am very happy, I finally took a few wickets, looking to do better and better in the coming games.

Chennai Super Kings captain, MS Dhoni said:

I think it was a par score, the ball wasn’t coming on nicely. I thought spinners came into play, there was no turn for them. Both Jaddu and Bhajjipa did very well, they kept us in the game after the start was provided by the fast bowlers.

On this wicket, we can’t get to know what is a good score. Batting – it could have been slightly better. We were worried about the bowling department, in the last few games, there’s no one individual who has come up and owned that place, especially someone who can bowl in the death overs.

The good thing is we have a lot of all-rounders, we need to know who is our death bowling option going ahead, that’s what we are worried about. That’s the reason for so many changes in the team for every game. That forces us to make changes in the top-order, depending on who comes into the team.

We are playing with multiple line-ups, so if someone on a good day bowls two or three overs (if possible four), that helps us keep Bravo at the end, he doesn’t need to bowl four overs always, it also helps the other bowlers know what they are expected to do, he also knows what he has to do in that over.

In the 9-10 games we have played, none of them have shown the consistency to bowl in the death overs. They kept losing wickets, that helped me keep the off-spinner for the longer side and the left-arm spinner for the shorter side, Jadeja bowled very well, he was manuvoering his pace, bowled with a flatter trajectory.

Virat and AB – both getting out made things slightly easy – they bowled 8 overs in tandem, that helped me to keep them going. As a team, we bowled really well.

Royal Challengers Bangalore captain, Virat Kohli said:

I think it was a close match, we did really well to pull it back but two drop catches doesn’t help. It wasn’t an ideal day for us, six out of six soft dismissals is really rare to see but that is how this game goes. We gave a good effort in the second half, we knew it is going to be difficult with the total we had.

This wicket surprised me, we knew it was going to be slow but it played slow under the lights too. It was difficult to score in the end, had we taken the chances we could have made the match closer. Everyone loves to see MSD striking the ball, the way he is doing.

The bigger picture is that it is good for Indian cricket. They have played well and they deserve to win this game. We know it is a tough road ahead, we need to win at least 4 matches or all 5 matches.

We have to pull our socks up. We have played our best cricket when we have been in this position. I have an optimistic feeling about the games ahead