IPL 2024: CSK beat RCB by 6 wickets in the opening match at Chennai.
Defending IPL champion, Chennai Super Kings beat Royal Challengers Bangalore by 6 wickets in the inaugural match of the 17th edition in Chennai on Friday night. Chasing 174 for victory, Chennai Super Kings overhauled the target with 6 wickets in hand and 8 balls to spare. Rachin Ravindra scored 37 off 15 balls for Chennai.
Earlier, electing to bat first, Royal Challengers Bangalore amassed 173 for six in stipulated 20 overs. Anuj Rawat contributed highest 48 off 25 for Bangalore. Mustafizur Rahman picked up 4 wickets by giving away just 29 runs for Chennai Super Kings. He was adjudged player of the match.
The tournament kicked off in a star-studded opening ceremony at M.A. Chidambaram Stadium last evening.
On Saturday, Punjab Kings will take on Delhi Capitals in Mohali at 3.30 pm while Kolkata Knight Riders will face Sunrisers Hyderabad in Kolkata at 7.30 pm.
Royal Challengers Bangalore fought hard with the ball to drag a chase of 173 down to the penultimate over but Chennai Super Kings eventually managed to get past the target rather comfortably by a 6-wicket margin. Mustafizur Rahman’s four-wicket haul proved to be the gamechanger in the tightly fought contest.On a pitch that was not offering much in terms of assistance for the bowlers, RCB employed the height of Cameron Green and Alzarri Joseph to target CSK with a plethora of short balls or back-of-length deliveries. These proved to be difficult to put away to the boundary, and even yielded RCB wickets early on. Ajinkya Rahane was out pulling to deep square leg, and so did Daryl Mitchell. In a season that allowed two bouncers per over, RCB took full toll of it in the opening game and made sure that the boundary-flow was halted. And it was important that they did so.
Because CSK had gotten off to a fantastic start in the chase otherwise. The first ten overs saw them get close to 100 with debutant Rachin Ravindra smashing a 15-ball 37 and complemented by cameos from Ruturaj Gaikwad, the new skipper, and Ajinkya Rahane. So RCB’s short-ball plan managed to turn the game around slightly.Shivam Dube and Ravindra Jadeja managed to take CSK home with an unbeaten 66-run stand. While Dube was uncomfortable initially against the short ball, mistiming pulls, but was lucky to see them land in vacant spots. Gradually, along with Jadeja, he found a better way to counter the short ball and even guided a couple of boundaries through the third man area, and topped it off with a massive pulled six as he took CSK over the line. Probably not, according to Dinesh Karthik who batted on the pitch and deemed it excellent for batting. This was soon after he put on a potentially game-changing partnership of 95 off 50 balls with Anuj Rawat (48) for the sixth wicket. The duo had dragged RCB from 78/5 to a total that was far more respectable than what was likely at that point. Yet, with the pitch behaving differently under lights, CSK would not have minded the target they were asked to chase. Debuting for CSK on a Chepauk pitch that is renowned for gripping, the Bangladesh seamer fit perfectly into the role that the injured Matheesha Pathirana would do. He came in after Faf du Plessis went on a rampage inside the powerplay smacking eight boundaries in his 35 and contributing majorly in a 41-run opening stand with Virat Kohli.
After tackling the movement in the air well, and carving out boundaries over the infield on the offside, the left-arm angle across from Mustafizur proved a different challenge for du Plessis who ended up slicing it to the deep on the offside where Rachin took a smart running catch. The pacer then topped it up by having Rajat Patidar caught behind in the same over.
When Kohli and Cameron Green began stitching together a partnership, Mustafizur was brought on again and he delivered once more as Kohli was caught in the deep by a smart relay catch, while Green backed away and was bowled by a cutter. Mustafizur now had four wickets in his first ten balls for CSK. With Deepak Chahar having Glenn Maxwell caught behind for a duck in between, RCB’s famed top order was left down in the dumps and staring down the barrel.
Through a sprightly stand between Karthik and Rawat. The duo took a couple of overs to settle in but began to find their groove soon after. Rawat got going with a couple of boundaries off Chahar while Karthik latched onto loose offerings from Theekshana to hit a six and a four in an over. Together they put on 71 in the last five overs which included a 25-run one against Tushar Deshpande. Rawat was run out off the last ball of the innings, two short of a fifty but a priceless innings nevertheless that augurs well for RCB for the rest of the tournament.
Brief Scores: Royal Challengers Bengaluru 172/6 in 20 overs (Anuj Rawat 48, Dinesh Karthik 38*) lost to Chennai Super Kings 176/4 in 18.4 overs (Rachin Ravindra 37, Shivam Dube 34*; Cameron Green 2-27) by 6 wickets
