Why did Sam Curran lead the batting?
No team had scored as slowly as the Super Kings in the power play this season prior to this game, and they decided it was time to turn things around: After 68 runs of 31 balls in the middle order, Curran was promoted to open the He hit for only the second time in his T20 career.
The move appeared to have flopped after three overs, with Curran struggling to time the ball and hitting unusually defensively at 10 of 15, when Faf du Plessis cut for a first pitch. But Curran pitched two fours and then two sixes in the fourth over Khaleel Ahmed, and he had done his job when Sandeep Sharma dropped him in the fifth for 31 of 21.
Why did Super Kings choose Chawla for Jagadeesan?
The Chennai Super Kings chose just five top-of-the-line bowling options on their side for the first tournament against the Mumbai Indians. But they started the second half of the season with seven, as Piyush Chawla came in for N Jagadeesan for Tuesday night’s game against the Sunrisers Hyderabad.
That allowed MS Dhoni to use specialists in certain phases and to target individual hitters with specific bowlers – new ball specialists Deepak Chahar and Sam Curran split the first seven overs between them, while Dwayne Bravo stayed until 14. Chawla he threw just six balls, being used at 16 to pick up the pace against a Kane Williamson set and conceding just eight runs.
Why did Karn Sharma capsize on the 18th?
Given his plethora of bowling options and with two kill specialists in Bravo and Shardul Thakur, it was a surprise to see Dhoni turn his legs in 18th. Dhoni is not a captain based on analysis, and he may not have known that Williamson’s hit rate against thrash in the IPL since 2018 was 112.09 in this match. He seemed to have clearly decided from his reading of the game that Williamson was desperate to keep up with the ball.
Dhoni’s ploy worked at first: Williamson hit a four with a bounce on the square leg before going long, seemingly ending the Sunrisers’ chances. When Rashid Khan and Shahbaz Nadeem took 15 of the next four balls between them, it looked like it could have backfired, but Thakur’s excellent 19 over made the game safe for the Super Kings.
Did referee Paul Reiffel change his mind on the 19th?
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Ian Bishop and Deep Dasgupta at a key moment in the chase
With a required 25 of 11 balls, Thakur sprayed a ball just outside the tram lines that Khan couldn’t reach, and referee Reiffel rightly widened. The next ball was almost a carbon copy, but Reiffel stopped midway through calling another wide as Dhoni and Thakur protested.
Replays showed that the ball had clearly passed the wide line again, and David Warner was visibly frustrated with the call in the Sunrisers dugout. It may not have made a difference given the collapse that followed, but it left the required rate at 14.40 runs higher instead of 12.50.
Why did Shane Watson score so slowly?
Curran’s promotion meant that Watson hit No. 3, the first time in 40 innings he didn’t start while playing for the Super Kings. Watson, a notoriously slow starter, had just four runs with his first 11 balls before throwing a signature pick-up on the square leg to hit T Natarajan by six.
There were moments in between against Nadeem, who he has fought in the past, and Khan when it looked like he was about to put his foot down, as he did against the Sunrisers in the 2018 final. But when Watson finally dug in to the In the end, he had managed just 42 runs while devouring nearly a third of the Super Kings overs by himself.
It’s surely too early to write off Watson, as he has shown in the past that he can bounce back from slow starts in a tournament as well as one inning, but with his strike rate this season at 122.33, you’ll know you don’t have to start. shoot soon.
Is Khan losing his spark?
After eight wickets with a 4.83 economy rate in his first six games of the season, Khan has returned a combined 2-for-55 in eight overs in his last two appearances. Those numbers are still good by normal standards, but there have been signs that teams are increasingly willing to take on him.
In particular, it has been instructive to see how teams have approached the fourth over of his spell. In the first six games, teams looked to play him, taking 28 combined runs for three wickets in his last six overs. But needing 36 of 18 balls when he returned for his last over in the Sunrisers’ previous game against the Rajasthan Royals, they had no choice but to attack; and Rahul Tewatia did just that by hitting him for three fours. On Tuesday, Watson and Ambati Rayudu hit six apiece in their fourth over.
In the next two weeks it will become clear whether those two rounds were the result of circumstance or a sign that teams are now willing to attack him.
Has Dhoni decided to follow the trend of hitting first?
After winning 22 pitches out of 27 in a remarkable streak dating back to the 2018 season, the Super Kings had lost their last four pitches in a row before this game. They had chased in every match in the first half of the group stage, losing five and winning two.
On Tuesday, Dhoni won the draw, hit first and continued the trend in this team tournament by successfully defending the scores. Discounting games that went to Super Overs, the team that hit first won 20 of 27 games this season. With pitches slowed down and thus increasingly similar to their home to Chepauk, there are reasons the Super Kings believe they can extend their record of reaching the playoffs each season.
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