The Clash of the Titans. It’s time for Chennai vs Kolkata. Both teams who won their first match will look to continue with the same momentum in the match. Kolkata defeated Bangalore in the first match while Chennai conquered Mumbai. See how Sam Billings took CSK to victory.
Preview
Chennai will be looking to make some changes in their battling line up as they won the last match by the scruff of the neck. In the presence of home fans after 2 years, Chennai will look to improve further. For the legion of their fans, it will be a homecoming for the men in yellow.
CSK Won The Toss And Elected To Field
Both teams made changes to their winning squad. While KKR made one change and brought in Tom Curran for Mitchell Johnson, Chennai made two changes to their team. As Kedar Jadhav is ruled out for the rest of the season due to his injury in the last match. Shardul Thakur and Sam Billings come in for Mark Wood and Kedar Jadhav.
Kolkata’s Batting
Despite losing their openers early, Robin Uthappa tried his best to keep the run rate up. But, the Knight Riders kept on losing wickets at regular wickets despite scoring runs at a fast pace. Dinesh Karthik tried to slow things down and keep wickets in hand for the end.
Andre Russell hit a few massive blows towards the end to bring up his half-century and take the team’s total to a massive 202 at the loss of 6 wickets. Russell took his personal score to 88 off just 36 balls with 11 enormous sixes.
CSK Bowling
Having a variety of bowlers in their team, fans expected a high-class performance with the ball from the home team. Even though the Super Kings leaked runs from one end in the first half of the innings, the bowlers kept on taking wickets at regular intervals and the fielding helped the team with the same.
CSK tried to get a control over the flow of runs whereas KKR tried to steady their ship. Russell made the bowlers pay for not bowling yorkers and took the team to a huge total. Bravo, CSK’s end over specialist went for 50 runs in 3 overs.
CSK’s Batting
Watson and Rayudu get the team to a flying start to start their chase for this massive ask of over 10 runs per over. In just 4 overs the Super Kings brought up the 50 run partnership. Watson departed for a quick fire 42 of just 19 balls. After the departure of Watson, it was a slow moving for CSK. The team from Chennai suffered another loss as Raina pulled off his calf, making the injury list longer after Jadhav’s injury in the previous match.
Sam Billings hit a half-century off just 21 balls. The innings by Watson and Billings just helped the Super Kings get over the line against KKR in this nail-biting clash.
KKR’s Bowling
The Knight Riders start off poorly, leaking runs from all ends. KKR contain things after Curran got the important wicket of Shane Watson. Bowlers bowled in tight areas to make sure the run rate went out of Chennai’s reach. Narine and Kuldeep Yadav both took charge and gave just 23 runs in 4 overs in the middle period. Even though the bowlers were hit out of the park in the latter overs, KKR had set a huge run chase for CSK. The match was taken right down to the wire because of KKRs poor bowling performance. Eventually, Vinay Kumar succumbed to the pressure and ended by giving 17 runs off the final over and just like that CSK snatched the victory from the Knight Riders grasp.
Man Of The Match
Undoubtedly, Sam Billings for his mind-blowing innings won the Man of the Match award. Billings scored 56 in just 23 balls with 5 sixes and 2 boundaries. Click here to see how Dhawan took SRH to victory over RR on last match.