Gaikwad rises above the heat

They say that the mercury has started to go down, but it was still a sweltering October afternoon in Dubai, the kind that is not understood unless experienced. The sun hits you and sweat drips all over the place, off shirt sleeves, headbands, helmet spikes, stinging your eyes. Drip, drip, drip. It’s at times like these that intentions can start to fade, and the road ahead can seem a bit hazy, almost like a mirage, especially if you’re having a season that CSK has had.

Today, the first over of chase 146 had brought a run. Yesterday, on the same field, a team failed to review 126. RCB’s voices floated through the stump microphones, emotion befitting the larger image on the scoreboard. Faf du Plessis, CSK’s best hitter this season, was on one extreme. On the other was Ruturaj Gaikwad, pocket-sized but with extra bits of courage.

The 23-year-old had enjoyed a breakout season on the domestic circuit, scoring as many as 677 runs for India A in an average of 113 over 8 innings between June and July last year. He had impressed MS Dhoni and Stephen Fleming on a training ground in Chennai before the team’s departure for Dubai, so much so that he had been anointed successor to Suresh Raina’s vacant spot even before the dust settled around the sudden departure of the strong man from CSK. .

He then contracted the virus and found himself confined within four pristine walls. When Gaikwad finally retired, he did so in the middle order of a struggling team and scored 0 and 5 in his first two games and was sentenced to another month on the sidelines. He came back again, more like an afterthought, after the captain had practically declared that the season was over. Trent Boult gave him another duck.

And here it was, opening again in a new ball wicket. If the PowerPlay is wasted, it will look for sparks elsewhere. Washington Sundar started his second round with a long and medium back. After playing his fifth point, Gaikwad made a small gap and launched a high shot over the middle. The timing took him over the boundary strings. Sundar followed up with a straighter ball that Gaikwad pushed, with gentle hands, away from the mid-wicket fielder and ran for a two. He showed the greatest authority with the third ball: a sure shot to score a single. As Gaikwad walked towards the end of the non-forward, the cameras captured him breathing deeply. Oh, the heat.

Gaikwad then started playing an inning that banished that alter ego of his. It was a gunshot response to anyone who might have doubted his abilities. It took its toll before the older ball could begin to stick to the surface. He came out of his fold and hit Mohammed Siraj on the blankets, Yuzvendra Chahal was firmly swept past the long leg and Moeen Ali effortlessly jumped over the long leg for six. The entire time, he remained athletic with his footwork and organized with his technique. That meant he didn’t attempt to pass any balls, a futile exercise that RCB had fallen prey to. He hit 50 of 42 balls, exactly the same number as Virat Kohli earlier in the day. And unsurprisingly, with Dhoni at the other end, he sealed the chase with six others and prompted his captain to utter the words: “I am pleased with the response from the young men.”

RCB flounder with his bowling plans

In many ways, this was the field for which CSK had assembled its squad. Here, three specialist hitters from RCB, Kohli, AB de Villiers and Devdutt Padikkal, who faced 20 balls or more, finished with a strike rate of 116 or less. The CSK’s top three had scoring rates of 127, 192, and 144 respectively.

Kohli won the toss and chose to go bowling. Dhoni revealed that he would have done the same. Both parties chose three seamers and three spinners. It was the dream to win. Win the raffle and dream. So far so good. Except Dhoni’s closers were Sam Curran, Deepak Chahar and Monu Kumar, three bowlers barely over the 130 km / h mark and prone to slowing the ball down with their cutters. That, coupled with the lengths they reached, made scoring doubly difficult even at death, where RCB scored just 20 runs from the final three overs and lost five wickets to the closers.

With Chris Morris, Navdeep Saini and Mohammed Siraj, RCB offered something the field didn’t: pace. Morris was more thorough even after a long ball nearly caught him taking cover. An attempted yorker was subsequently thrown past the fine leg by du Plessis and the next length ball thrown over the middle of the wicket for six. Siraj, having been picked up by a four, launched a fast-tracking gorilla with the thin leg still up and conceded six. Saini’s first over started at 140 km / h and ended with a complete ball of 146 km / h with all deliveries between these two brands. By the 10th, CSK had 82 on the board and

“What you saw in the second inning was not a true reflection of how difficult the pitch was,” Kohli exclaimed in an accurate summary of the bowling effort. “We didn’t hit the areas. Too many limit balls. They were thrown really well. We barely got any drive balls from them. We were looking for 150, but we were happy with 145. Our extra pace might be a factor, but that can’t be an excuse. We just didn’t throw enough slower balls. No changes of pace, no gorillas. We saw how difficult it was to get under those slower balls. ”

Kohli was also not flawless with his captaincy. Defending 146 on a slow wicket, he had rightly brought Yuzvendra Chahal into the fourth over and then switched his end a couple of overs later. But having thrown two overs of 12, Chahal was out of action through 8-13 overs when CSK wasted the rapids. When Chahal returned, he pitched Ambati Rayudu with his third ball, but by then CSK only needed 32 more runs to win at less than one run per ball.