Punjab Kings spinners Harpreet Brar and Rahul Chahar stifle CSK by not conceding a boundary in eight overs.
It had to happen one day. The timing of it though — just 24 hours after making the T20 World Cup cut — can’t go unnoticed. Shivam Dube has scored a duck for the first time this season, bringing an end to a stupendous run that produced 350 runs at a strike rate of over 170. But he also has a wicket to show. Plucking Jonny Bairstow with an innocuous off-cutter, that too off the second ball of his season, should have been an ideal boost to Dube’s allround credentials but Rilee Rossouw carting him for a six and four in the same over meant CSK’s small experiment with Dube the allrounder lasted just one over.
Punjab Kings’ captain Sam Curran shakes hands with Chennai Super Kings’ MS Dhoni after Punjab Kings won the IPL match(AP)
Dube’s dismissal was on expected lines, getting down on his knee for a slog but Harpreet Brar slipped the ball under his heave to hit him on his back leg for a straightforward leg-before dismissal. Baffling though was how Chennai Super Kings allowed that dismissal to stifle their innings in a deflating seven-wicket loss to Punjab Kings. Going 55 balls without hitting a boundary after the Powerplay in a bleak display of processional batting from CSK not only highlighted a lack of contingency, but also the lack of intent when Punjab were slowly becoming more assertive.
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The setbacks were undoubtedly big, Losing Ajinkya Rahane and Dube off consecutive balls in the ninth over, followed by Ravindra Jadeja in the next over, CSK understandably needed some time to steady the innings. Sixes don’t come easy at Chepauk but Ruturaj Gaikwad — the only CSK batter to score over 30 — not being able to find the gaps meant CSK couldn’t arrest the dipping run rate for a worryingly long time. Orchestrating this slump was the slow bowling of Brar and Rahul Chahar, taking two wickets apiece and conceding only 33 runs in their eight overs without a boundary.
All four were top-order wickets, but none as significant as Dube who has been identified and put to great use as a middle-overs spin basher this season. And key to each of those four dismissals was the way Brar and Chahar kept flighting the ball, daring CSK’s batters to take them on. Gaikwad didn’t take that risk as he grafted his way to a fifty, but neither did Sameer Rizvi, who had been hurriedly drafted in as impact sub for Rahane after Jadeja fell.
By the time Rizvi finally broke the deadlock with a streaky boundary, the damage was already irreparable. Sixty runs in the last five overs could have been decent damage control but for the middle overs when CSK averaged a run rate of only 5.22. It also exposed CSK’s inability to deal with spin without Dube, aggregating 33 off eight overs of spin against 124 from 12 overs of pace.
This being their home, CSK were probably expecting their spinners to inflict similar damage on Punjab. But waiting for the fielding restrictions to be lifted probably played into Punjab’s hands as they raced away to 52/1 in the Powerplay. When spinners were finally deployed, Jonny Bairstow didn’t waste any time giving them the charge. Jadeja was greeted with boundaries through third man and deep midwicket in his first over. Next over from Moeen Ali, Bairstow first pulled him over wide long-on for six before targeting deep midwicket where Jadeja not only failed to reach a difficult catch but also conceded a boundary.
Rilee Rossouw kept attacking despite Bairstow’s dismissal, before Dube finally got him. But so decisive was the momentum garnered in the first half of the innings that Sam Curran and Shashank Singh had no problem pacing the rest of the chase. Mustafizur Rahman’s cutters were given the respect they deserved in a miserly spell of 3-1-13-0 but the rest of the CSK bowling hardly posed a problem. Add to that Deepak Chahar hobbling off the field after bowling just two balls and all in all, it wasn’t a great day for the Super Kings.
