Shane Watson's blistering knock took the match away from Chennai Super Kings as Rajasthan Royals defeated them by five wickets at Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur on Sunday. Stuart Binny too played his role in the win as he smashed 41 off 23 balls and also picked up the big wicket of Mike Hussey.
Here we bring to you the hits and flops from the match between Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings.
HITS
Shane Watson: Watson played a sensational knock of 70 runs which turned the tables in RR’s favour. He batted till the end and made sure to finish off the match quite comfortably.
Jason Holder: Holder gave some early blows to Rajasthan Royals as he dismissed Ajinkya Rahane and James Faulkner in his second over and ended up with the figures of 2/21 in his four overs. He gave CSK a nice start but rest of the bowlers failed to capitalize on it.
Stuart Binny: Binny played another sensational cameo as he went on to score 41 runs off just 23 balls that he faced. He kept his cool till the very end and hit a brilliant six to hand over a comfortable win to RR.
Mike Hussey: Hussey played another sensible knock as he scored 40 runs off 40 balls. Though he looked a bit uncomfortable in taking the risk in the initial phase, he hit six fours in his knock.
Kevon Cooper: Cooper bowled well as he took the wickets of Suresh Raina and MS Dhoni who could have been very explosive if they would have got time to spent in the middle.
Murali Vijay: Though slow in his approach, Murali Vijay scored 55 off 50 balls and went on to give a solid start to Chennai Super Kings. But the Chennai batsmen failed to capitalise on it.
FLOPS
R Ashwin: Ashwin was smacked for 23 runs in the only over that he bowled. Watson hit him for three sixes in that over which not only gave RR a momentum but also was the turning point of the match.
Ajinkya Rahane: Rahane got out after scoring just nine runs. After three half-centuries his confidence was high, but the ball moving off the pitch troubled him and his mistimed the shot that went into the hands of Murali Vijay standing at mid-on.
Suresh Raina: Raina departed after scoring just one run and was dismissed by Cooper. He mistimed the shot and ball was caught quite comfortably at long-on by Samson.
Siddharth Trivedi: Trivedi went for 22 runs in his two overs. He bowled some loose deliveries in his first over and got smacked for three fours.
MS Dhoni: Dhoni didn’t contribute much with the bat and was undone by Cooper. He tried to go hard on him but ball took the edge and went straight to the hands of Watson at slips.
Sanju Samson: He failed to make the most of short-of-a-length delivery which took the edge of his willow and went into the Dhoni’s gloves. Mohit Sharma sent him to the dug-out for a duck.
By Amit Chopra
Indian Sports News Network