Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians defended their totals to crowd the summit of the IPL points table.
Match 1: Chennai Super Kings vs Kings XI Punjab
On a hot sunny day at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, the Men In Yellow opted to bat after naming a couple of changes. Dwayne Bravo was ruled out as a result of injury with Kiwi pacer Scott Kuggeleijn taking his place. Mohit Sharma and Shardul Thakur too paved way for Harbhajan Singh and Faf du Plessis.
The South African skipper made his return in style with a composed fifty, however wickets in the middle by Ravichandran Ashwin derailed the Super Kings’ momentum before MS Dhoni and Ambati Rayudu set things straight with some exuberant death hitting to propel them to 160.
The chase did not start well for the visitors as Gayle and Agarwal departed for 5 and 0 respectively courtesy of Harbhajan Singh’s spin. However, KL Rahul and Sarfaraz Khan inched towards the total with a 100-run stand, but the pair paid a heavy price for leaving too much at the end. Super Kings ended on the winning side by 22 runs to leapfrog to the top place in the table.
Brief Scorecard:
CSK 160-3 (20 overs) (du Plessis 54; R.Ashwin 3-23)
KXIP 138-5 (20 overs) (S.Khan 67; H.Singh 2-17)
Match 2: Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Mumbai Indians
As the phrase goes, Revenge is best served cold, Mumbai Indians too served Sunrisers Hyderabad a bashing to remember.
Mumbai Indians played an ace in the form of Alzarri Joseph which proved to turn around the fortunes for them. The three-time champions suffered yet another top-order disaster class with Sunrisers Hyderabad running through the batting line-up.
However, late death over blitz by Kieron Pollard which saw 40 runs being scored off the last 2 overs, took the visitors to a total of 136-7.
The Mumbai bowling attack proceeded to do what the Sunrisers bowling attack did to them at Wankhede last season. The pace trio of Behrendorff, Bumrah and Joseph couple with the leg spin of Rahul Chahar wrecked the Sunrisers Hyderabad.
In-form batsmen Jonny Bairstow and David Warner were victims as young Alzarri Joseph stormed his way into the record books. The Caribbean pacer picked up the best bowling figures in the history of IPL, beating Sohail Tanvir’s record set in 2008.
Brief Scorecard:
MI 136-7 (20 overs) (K.Pollard 46; S.Kaul 2-34)
SRH 96 (17.4 overs) (D.Hooda 20; A.Joseph 6-12)
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