The Chennai Super Kings have collected some of the greatest T20 players in the world – captain MS Dhoni, Faf du Plessis, Suresh Raina, Dwayne Smith, DJ Bravo, Brendon McCullum and Ravi Ashwin, to name just a few. So a match with the Dolphins from South Africa was never going to be much of a contest, if we are being truly honest. But kudos to the Dolphins for making a match out of it and giving it everything, only to fall short by 54 runs in the end.
The star of the show this time for Chennai Super Kings was Suresh Raina, who seems to have made a habit of getting significant scores in T20 matches for his club. Raina may not have had the greatest international career (although that is picking up, of late), but for Chennai Super Kings, he is an absolute champion performer.
This match saw Raina smash a brilliant 90 off just 43 balls, with an incredible 8 sixes and 4 fours. Nobody can hit the ball out of the park quite like Suresh Raina when he gets going, and so when the sixes came in this match, they came in a barrage.
The Dolphins captain Morne van Wyk chose to bowl first on winning the toss, hoping to take advantage of the reputation the Chinnaswamy Stadium has for aiding sides batting second. This proved to be a really poor decision on part of the Dolphins captain, as he could only watch helplessly for the entire 20 overs of the Chennai Super Kings’ innings, with the superstar cricketers Raina, Brendon McCullum, Faf du Plessis and Ravindra Jadeja taking the Dolphins attack to the cleaners, plundering runs at will, taking the Super Kings to a mammoth 242 for 6.
Brendon McCullum made a quick fire 49 off 29 balls, Faf du Plessis impressed with 30 off 19 and Ravindra Jadeja smashed his way around with an unbeaten 40 off just 15 balls, with 3 fours and 3 sixes.
The Dolphins did not take this lying down and responded brilliantly, right from the start. Openers Morne Van Wyk and Cameron Delport smashed 50 runs off just 15 balls, and seemingly, the Dolphins were very much in the game, pretty well set in the chase of an impossible target set by the Chennai Super Kings.
Indeed, the Dolphins made 85 runs off the six overs of the Powerplay, beating the CLT20 record set only earlier in the day by the Chennai Super Kings, so dominant was the Dolphins batting performance. But they were left undone by a poor umpiring performance by K Srinath, the on field umpire, who gave Van Wyk’s wicket to Ravi Ashwin as a leg before wicket, despite the ball being several inches outside the leg stump. Unluckily for Van Wyk, he had just been taking warmly to Ashwin’s bowling, smashing him for two fours and a six in the same over itself.
After Van Wyk’s poor dismissal, Cameron Delport, who had played well enough to make 34 off a mere 9 balls was dismissed by a Mohit Sharma slow ball. And that effectively ended the Dophins’ brave attempt.
The required run rate was soon mounting to impossible proportions, and despite brave efforts by Cody Chetty, who made 37 off 28 balls, it was clear to everyone at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore that the Dolphins would fall short.
