Sports

CSK vs GT Emotional Rollercoaster: Comical fielding error, usual adulation for MS Dhoni, destruction from ‘Yuvraj Singh lite’

March 27, 2024
S K Mittal

Chennai Super Kings dropped Maheesh Theekshana on Tuesday. Though it may raise eyebrows, the move to bring in Matheesha Pathirana made total sense.

With Rachin Ravindra in the XI, who is also capable of bowling four overs, Chennai believe Pathirana will provide them with the edge.

As far as Theekshana goes, since joining the Super Kings he hasn’t created the sort of impact that the team would have expected from him, especially in home conditions at the Chepauk.

In all of this, Mitchell Santner would feel hard done by. He had a superb outing for New Zealand at the last year’s World Cup at Chepauk.

But he once again warmed the bench at Chepauk.

Two cooks spoil the fielding

A misunderstanding between two batters often results in a run-out. One between two fielders doesn’t always have such a drastic consequence. But Gujarat Titans – already reeling from the Rachin Ravindra rampage at the top of the order – didn’t need what happened between David Miller and Rahul Tewatia in the ninth over. It was an innocuous push to the onside by Ajinkya Rahane and would have been only a single, at most a brace. That was before the fielders intervened, or decided not too. Miller was running in from long-on and Tewatia from deep midwicket. They reached the ball at almost the same time but when they got there, they decided to leave it for each other.

As a result, the ball ran unimpeded to almost the boundary, and Rahane got four runs without finding the rope. What transpired would have made sense if the fielding side was Lucknow Super Giants. After all, the Uttar Pradesh capital is renowned for its ‘pehle aap’ culture. However, that doesn’t always work on the cricket field where leaving the job to someone else is, more often than not, frowned upon. It certainly didn’t improve Gujarat Titans skipper Shubman Gill’s mood at a crucial stage.

Festive offer

Dube, the game-changer

Ravichandran Ashwin once called him ‘Yuvraj Singh lite’. The swing of the bat, the clean hitting when he times it well and the fact that he can clear the boundaries are some of the similarities between Shivam Dube and ‘Yuvi’. But unlike Yuvraj who made an immediate impact, Dube’s career has been up and down. At CSK, he has been unburdened and the fear of failure seems to have gone out of the window. Dube, like a lot of Indian batsmen, is susceptible to the short ball and with two bouncers allowed in an over now, he will have to pick and choose his horizontal bat shots.

Against Gujarat Titans, Dube had a perfect game with the bat. He easily dealt with the short ball from pacer Spencer Johnson and dispatched it to the deep fine leg for a six. The left-hander treated Rashid Khan’s googly with utter disdain; he spotted it early and deposited it over the long on fence. Five sixes and two four in a whirlwind 51 to go with an unbeaten 34 against RCB in the season opener. Though not yet in the Yuvraj Singh league, there is no telling how far his new-found confidence will take him.

A MSD moment

“I’ve still got it I guess,” Virat Kohli said after his fantastic innings against Punjab Kings on Monday night. You could say that for the second straight night as well, this time about MS Dhoni’s glovework. All evening, the Chennai fans were rooting for their Thala to come out to bat. Every time his face was shown on the screen, a huge roar went up. But he remained in the dressing room during CSK’s batting innings, with the likes of Sameer Rizvi and Ravindra Jadeja coming out to bat in the end overs.

But the fans would get their MSD moment. Daryl Mitchell induced an outside edge off Vijay Shankar. Dhoni seemed to be planted on his left foot, but managed to put in a full-length dive to his right and get both hands to the ball. As he completed the catch, it wasn’t just the fans who roared in delight. Even his teammates mobbed him in celebrations while he just had a knowing smile. Still got it.

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