(Football news) After two away losses, Chennai Super Kings returned to winning ways by slowing down the Kolkata Knight Riders with spin on a tacky Chepauk pitch, resulting in the team’s first IPL 2024 loss. On Monday, at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Ravindra Jadeja and company engineered a seven-wicket victory on a typical Chepauk track that remained slow, aided spinners, and made it difficult for batters to score. This was in contrast to the previous two matches, where none of the home spinners claimed a wicket.
In his analysis of the defeat, Kolkata’s captain Shreyas Iyer said that his team failed to react fast enough to the conditions, which he described as changing “tremendously” after the first six overs.
“I personally feel we fell short in terms of assessing the wicket,” Kolkata’s captain Iyer said after the match. “We were phenomenal in the powerplay but after that, we couldn’t capitalise, we lost consecutive wickets. We weren’t able to assess the conditions as quickly as possible. It completely changed after the powerplay and scoring runs off this wicket wasn’t easy.
“Obviously, they know conditions pretty well and they bowled according to their plan. It was a bit tacky, especially even when the hard-hitters came in, it wasn’t easy for them to go [big] right from the first ball. It changed tremendously after the powerplay. We were trying to construct our innings, didn’t go to plan. We take those learnings and move forward.”
After leaking 56 runs in the powerplay, CSK pulled things back thanks to Jadeja’s 3 for 18. Add Maheesh Theekshana and Rachin Ravindra into the mix, and the spinners combined to bowl nine overs for just 50 runs and four wickets to restrict Kolkata to a below-par 137 for 9.
“We were in a comfortable place at the beginning, we thought 160-170 would be a great score on this wicket. Even when they played against RCB, the conditions were fairly similar. So that was our plan but when you lose consecutive wickets, it’s difficult to carry forward momentum,” Iyer said.
CSK captain Ruturaj Gaikwad, who led the chase with an unbeaten 67 off 58, felt it was a “slightly tricky” wicket and that the onus was on him to bat through to take the team home after the No. 3 Ajinkya Rahane strained his calf. It was also an important knock for Gaikwad personally, who finally contributed definitively after scores of 15, 46, 1, 26 in the previous four games.
“Bit of nostalgia for me,” Gaikwad said of batting with MS Dhoni in the final part of the chase. “My first IPL fifty, Mahi bhai was there with me to finish the match. Pretty much the same situation today. I feel with Jinx [Rahane] slightly injured, it was my role to stay till the end on a wicket which was slightly tricky. I didn’t want to put the youngsters in a pressure situation. Overall, a good game for us.
“I would still say it was a 150-160 wicket. Didn’t think it was a six-hitting pitch but definitely 160.
“I wouldn’t say mine is a slow start [he was on 9 off 11 at one stage], in T20s there are times you nick off one or two balls, sometimes you need a bit of luck to get going. Today it was perfect I could take some time a bit, maybe something for experts to talk about, with my strike rate, but still good to get a win.”
With this victory, CSK moves up to fourth place on the points table with six points from five games, while Kolkata Knight Riders is in second place with six points from four games. The next several games for CSK will be played away from home, and on April 23, they will host Lucknow Super Giants. For five straight home games, KKR will return to Eden Gardens.
