A Harsh time in Chennai
Chennai: Pacer Harshal Patel made the best use of a sluggish Chepauk surface as Sunrisers Hyderabad put Chennai Super Kings on the brink of exit door by winning the battle of laggards by five wickets in the Indian Premier League here on Friday.
Harshal, a fine exponent of the slower delivery and the knuckle ball, took 4/28 as CSK endured another poor outing with the bat and were bowled out for 154 in 19.5 overs.
Despite getting assistance from the dew-laden surface, SRH made a heavy weather of the chase before finally knocking off the target in 18.4 overs.
Ishan Kishan (44 off 34 balls) played a responsible hand at the top before Kamindu Mendis (32 not out off 22 balls) and Nitish Kumar Reddy (19 not out off 13 balls) got the visitors two points with a 49-run stand. This was SRH’s first win at this venue.
With six points from nine games, SRH’s playoffs qualification hangs by a thread as they need to win all their five matches and that too by a fair margin to end on 16 points, which is a safe cut-off.
SRH leapfrogged Rajasthan Royals to the eighth position in the 10-team table as Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s men remain at the bottom of the heap.
For CSK, their seventh defeat in nine games practically ends their hopes as they now need wins in the next five games and hope that the play-off cut-off remains at 14 for the fourth-placed team.
The confidence of CSK batters has been shot to pieces and the lack of a collective effort from their bowlers only compounded the problems.
Harshal, who cleverly used the change of pace, was complemented well by skipper Pat Cummins (2/21), ambidextrous spinner Kamindu (1/26), veterans Mohammed Shami (1/28) and Jaydev Unadkat (2/21).
Dewald Brevis (42 off 25) was the top scorer while Deepak Hooda (22 off 21) played some lofty shots towards the end to take CSK past 150-run mark.
Sent in to bat, CSK witnessed a horrendous start as they lost Shaik Rasheed in the first ball off Mohammed Shami, caught by Abhishek Sharma at first slip. It was a perfect Test match delivery, pitched on length outside off and shaped away with the batter just poking at it. “In the first innings, the wicket was slightly better and 154 wasn’t a justifiable
score,” Dhoni said.
Brief scores. CSK: 154 all out in 19.5 overs (Brevis 42; Harshal 4/28); SRH: 155/5 in 18.4 overs (Kishan 44).
