Poor form of Chennai Super Kings’ batsmen will be the primary worry for Mahendra Singh Dhoni as the defending champions aim to arrest their mini-slide when they take on Sunrisers Hyderabad in an Indian Premier League encounter in Chennai on Tuesday.
There will be familiar narratives surrounding this game – a quick return fixture. Ambati Rayudu and Vijay Shankar, swapping their home states for the two franchises, will be under the scanner again after the World Cup selection.
It is, of course, the rerun of the 2018 final where CSK won at the Wankhede. But in the last match, SRH finally ended a streak of four consecutive defeats to CSK – the team in orange had a 0-4 record against CSK in 2018.
Back to the comforts of their home ground after a four-match away sojourn that saw them win two and lose two, CSK will look to bounce back after a pasting from SRH in Hyderabad not too long ago. And a win will ensure a play-off berth for Dhoni’s men, who lost back-to-back away matches against SRH and Royal Challengers Bangalore respectively. CSK now play three consecutive home matches and can all but assure a top two finish if they win two out of those.
While Dhoni’s Herculean effort to pull off another miraculous chase has been the talking point, it is difficult to ignore the poor form of the rest of the batting order, which is putting the skipper under pressure match after match.
Last season’s hero Shane Watson (147 runs), Ambati Rayudu (192) and Suresh Raina (207) haven’t lived up to expectations. The pressure has been entirely on Dhoni, who leads the charts with 314 runs and the batting unit needs to step up.
If CSK’s problem is the non-performance of the top-order, Sunrisers Hyderabad’s issue is an over-dependence on theirs, with bulk of the runs being scored by openers David Warner (517 runs) and Jonny Bairstow (445 runs).
On the flip side, this match will be Bairstow’s last game for the last year’s runners-up as he heads back to England for World Cup preparations. SRH captain Kane Williamson will, firstly, hope for another match-winning innings and then, will need to start worrying about replacing the explosive opener.
On Tuesday, Dhoni’s men will be slight favourites given their home form. CSK are the only side this year to have an unbeaten record at the fag end of the season, having won all four of their matches at the M Chidambaram Stadium.
The Chepauk pitch has been sluggish in the games played so far and coach Stephen Fleming attributed it to being one of the reasons for top-order’s poor show.
“We played on Chennai tracks, where it is little bit difficult to find form. We are being little bit reckless and that comes about from guys who want to find form and do the job, but what is happening is we are relying heavily on Dhoni and Rayudu to patch things up and we won’t win the competition if this continues,” Fleming sounded a warning.
When the two lop-sided batting sides meet each other for the sixth time in the past two years, however, the final say might go to Imran Tahir, Ravindra Jadeja, Harbhajan Singh (CSK spinners), and Rashid Khan as to who does the most damage on a helpful Chennai pitch. The two sides boast of the most economical spin attacks in the tournament for a reason – the overall economy rate of CSK’s spinners is 6.33 and the corresponding number for SRH is 6.62.
Head to Head in IPL:
Overall: Matches – 11, Chennai Super Kings – 8, Sunrisers Hyderabad - 3
Teams:
Chennai Super Kings: MS Dhoni (captain & WK), Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Shane Watson, Faf du Plessis, Murali Vijay, Kedar Jadhav, Sam Billings, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Shorey, Chaitanya Bishnoi, Rituraj Gaikwad, Dwayne Bravo, Karn Sharma, Imran Tahir, Harbhajan Singh, Mitchell Santner, Shardul Thakur, Mohit Sharma, K M Asif, Deepak Chahar, N Jagadeesan (wk), Scott Kuggeleijn.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Kane Williamson (capt), Basil Thampi, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Hooda, Manish Pandey, T Natarajan, Ricky Bhui, Sandeep Sharma, Siddarth Kaul, Shreevats Goswami, Khaleel Ahmed, Yusuf Pathan, Billy Stanlake, David Warner, Rashid Khan, Mohammad Nabi, Shakib Al Hasan, Jonny Bairstow, Wriddhiman Saha, Martin Guptill, Vijay Shankar, Abhishek Sharma, Shahbaz Nadeem.
Match starts at 8 pm.
(With PTI and iplt20.com inputs)
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