Chennai: Captain Cool, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, once again pulled off a nail-biter with his brilliant knock of 67 runs off just 37 balls against Sunrisers Hyderabad at Chepauk, Chennai on Thursday. Chennai Super kings registered their third home win of this edition of Indian Premier League as they beat Hyderabad by five wickets in the last over thriller and it became possible due to terrific batting efforts of MS Dhoni and Mike Hussey. Amit Mishra came up with dazzling performance with the ball and picked up three wickets but that wasn’t enough to lead SRH to a victory.
Earlier, it was some brilliant work from Shikhar Dhawan and Ashish Reddy who made the good use of pitch as they scored 63 and 36 runs respectively. Duo of Mohit Sharma and Dwayne Bravo did well to get couple of wickets each and restricted SRH to a competitive total of 159 for the loss of six wickets.
Chennai Super Kings were out to chase 160 runs against the bowling attack that has Dale
Steyn and Darren Sammy with it but that didn’t affect the pair of Mike Hussey and Murali Vijay from playing their strokes and within no time they added 50 runs for CSK. Amit Mishra gave them two quick blows to get rid of Vijay and Hussey and reduced the score to 2/76 in the first 10 overs. Hussey departed after scoring 45 runs off 26 balls.
Suresh Raina started well by taking ones and twos but wasn’t able to get the boundaries which gave Karan Sharma a great chance to create ample of pressure with his spin and Mishra exploited that brilliantly to get Raina out at very crucial time. Meanwhile, Karan Sharma gave away just 8 runs in his four overs whereas Mishra ended up with the figures of 3/26.
But it was MS Dhoni who kept his nerves and was looking to try bat through 20 overs and started taking calculating risk against Steyn. He kept hitting the ball for the maximum and ripped apart the CSK bowling completely as he hit 29 runs off 11 balls that he faced off Steyn.
With 15 runs needed off the final over and Dhoni on strike, it wasn't an impossible task for CSK and to make it even made more easy by the decision of Cameron White who opted to bowl with young Ashish Reddy instead of experienced Darren Sammy. This decision backfired and Dhoni steered CSK to a five-wicket victory with two balls remaining.
Earlier, it was Shikhar Dhawan who batted brilliantly for Sunrisers Hyderabad and kept his cool when the wickets were tumbling as they were reduced to 3/37 in their first five overs. Hanuma Vihari and Cameron White got out after scoring just two runs each while Quinton de Kock departed for just four runs. Mohit Sharma got de Kock and White out whereas Vihari was brilliantly run out by Raina. But this didn’t affect Dhawan and he kept on playing sensibly by getting that odd boundary and was rotating the strike really well. Mishra came in at number five and was dismissed by Ravichandran Ashwin after scoring 15 runs. Dhawan also went off the field when ball hit his abdomen region and got him in some trouble.
But Ashish Reddy and Darren Sammy kept hitting their big shots to accelerate the innings and added 18 runs for the sixth wicket stand. Sammy was sent back to pavilion by Dwayne Bravo after scoring 19 runs which brought Dhawan into the centre. Ashish and Dhawan did well to add 43 runs in 16 balls which were studded with two sixes and six fours. Reddy went onto score 36 runs off 16 balls whereas Dhawan played well to get 63 runs off 45 balls which got their team to a competitive total of 159 runs in 20 overs.
By ISN