IPL 2021: Match 15 - KKR vs CSK - Who Said What

It was crazy scenes at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Pat Cummins was hitting it superbly and at will but his heroic knock eventually ended in a losing cause. Chennai Super Kings (CSK) have now won three matches on the trot after losing the first game and are at the top of the points table after their stunning win against the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR).

After losing the toss, CSK got off to a brilliant start with Ruturaj Gaikwad finally finding some form with the bat. He slammed 64 runs off 42 balls while Faf du Plessis also batted as the duo added 115 runs in 12.1 overs. Even after Gaikwad got out, Du Plessis kept playing his shots while he was well supported by Moeen Ali and MS Dhoni with cameos.

The former South African skipper batted through the innings scoring 95 off 60 balls while Moeen mustered 25 off 12. MS Dhoni finally hit a six on his way to 17 off 8 balls. CSK managed to post a mammoth total of 220/3 in their 20 overs.

The chase was never going to be easy but KKR lost their top five with a score of just 31 runs within powerplay. This is when the show started for KKR with Andre Russell taking the attack to the opposition. He hammered 54 runs off 22 balls before Sam Curran sensationally castled him down the leg-side. The game wasn’t done though as Dinesh Karthik (40) was still in the middle.

However, the man who took the game deep was Pat Cummins. When the game seemed to be done and dusted, the Australian smacked sixes across all the parts of the ground. He muscles Curran for 30 runs in an over to turn the game on its head but eventually ran out of partners as KKR were all out for 202 runs with Cummins stranded on 66.

Man of the Match, Faf du Plessis said:

This was the most fluent I’ve felt so far. Felt the previous game things started to get better. Tonight was another step. It’s about the rhythm of the flow of the hands. Few games before this and even tonight spinners were the best bowlers.

Even Jadeja bowled well for us. The ball just grips a bit. We thought the seamers from the other side we can catch up. He’s a fantastic young talent. Those first couple of balls you can feel on edge as a batter.

Beautiful to see him trust the timing and the technique. For a small guy he hits the ball a long way. been very lucky playing under MS for a long time. He knows what he’s doing, pleasure to play under him. Was dew tonight and then it was a proper batter’s game.

CSK skipper MS Dhoni said:

Quite easy in a game like this. From the 16th over onwards the contest was between the fast bowler and the batsman. You can’t do too much. Can’t put different field. It’s about you vs me. The side that has one is a side that has executed slightly better. But if they would’ve had more wickets, could’ve been different.

Have seen enough in cricket, always like to be humble. There’s no good reason if you have scored, the opposition can’t score. My lines to the players was that we have got good runs on the board but let’s be humble. You don’t want to take too many early wickets. Big hitters coming in, 200 runs, there’s only one way they’ll play. Not much you can do.

The only option was Jadeja. It was turning, was a bit dry. The batting has been really good. Rutu is somebody who has shown his class in the last IPL. You always need to assess where he is mentally. Once when he was off guard, I just asked him how are you feeling today.

When you put a question like that, you wait for the reactions, you see what’s in his eyes. There was enough in his reactions to suggest he wasn’t rattled. That’s what I’ve been doing all my life (applying psychology) but in a good way.

KKR skipper Eoin Morgan said:

It’s (pulse) quite high at the moment. What a hell of a game of cricket. Certainly from the position we were in after our powerplay, we probably didn’t think we’d get as close as we did. But Andre Russell,

Dinesh Karthik really did put a partnership together, once you do that taking advantage of the conditions here, it’s very difficult to stop. A partnership going in that manner and then following that Pat Cummins the way he played really gave us every chance towards the end.

Tremendous fight from our middle and lower order which is all you can ask for when you lose wickets upfront like that. The first five overs of our batting didn’t go our way. We didn’t play as well as would have liked. If we had built a partnership and taken advantage of those early overs going into those middle overs, we would have been in a really strong position.

We can be happy with the way (we adapted to) new ground, different challenges. Going back to it now having watched our guys bat, I don’t think there was a great deal of margin of error. So we have to be a little bit kinder to our bowlers when we walk off.

Having been hit for 220 and then nearly getting close, being five down very early, you have to be honest with the bowlers about execution. It does make a huge amount of difference but you really have to be on the money here.

I tend to stay away from Andre after he’s got out. When he’s in the form like this, he’s as good a player as any in the tournament, particularly when he strikes the ball like that. It’s great that he’s been in this sort of form. It’s disappointing that the rest of us couldn’t help him out. He’ll obviously be disappointed.