Vintage Dhoni lights up Eden
SUBLIME TOUCH Chennai Super Kings skipper smashes unbeaten 25ball 43 but KKR do well to restrict them to 177/5
KOLKATA: At three minutes to nine, the luminous intensity at Eden increased even though the floodlights were at their dazzling best. MS Dhoni had just walked in and the torches in mobile phones added to the incandescence. Just before that, the IPL’S equivalent of a clothed Jimmy Jump had streaked into the Chennai Super Kings’ (CSK) dugout to get close with ‘Him’ before the police intervened.
Unfazed by all this, Dhoni worked the bowling quietly even as Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) staged a comeback, after electing to bowl, dismissing Shane Watson, Suresh Raina and Ambati Rayudu between the 11th and the 15th overs and conceding 31 runs. From 91/1, CSK were 119/4.
Shivam Mavi even cramped Dhoni for space and once bounced him outside the offstump. Next ball, the young bowler who had an impressive evening bowling close to the stump and using the slower ball well, tried the same thing but couldn’t land it in the right area. Dhoni hoiked him over midwicket for six.
Dhoni played six balls of Mitchell Johnson’s next over, the innings’ 17th, and helped him end his spell leaking 51 runs. The second six in that over showed that even though his back may still be stiff, Dhoni’s
hands are strong enough to send a ball so high into the sky that Rinku Singh at the mid-on fence could only watch it sail. Johnson had gone for 19 in the innings’ fifth.
The chants of ‘Dhoni, Dhoni’ got louder and then Shubman Gill dropped him at deep squareleg, the ball slipping through his hands.
Worse, it went for a six taking Extras (b 4, w 3)
Total (5 wkts, 20 ovs)
FOW: 1-48, 2-91, 3-101, 4-119, 5-173.
Bowling: Johnson 4-0-51-0, Chawla 4-0-35-2, Mavi 3-0-21-0, Narine 4-0-20-2, Russell 1-0-12-0, Kuldeep 4-0-34-1. Dhoni to 35. Yet, KKR would be happy that CSK were restricted to 177/5 after being 90/1 after 10. Dhoni stayed unbeaten on 43 off 25 balls, somewhat subdued by his standards.
En route, KKR broke the Powerplay hoodoo when Piyush Chawla’s googly foxed Faf du Plessis. Sunil Narine too broke a two-match barren run, finishing with 2/20 in 4 overs; dismissing Watson by dropping it slightly short and getting him out on the midwicket fence and then bowling CSK’S highest rungetter Ambati Rayudu with a vicious of-break.
But what Gill did, Ravindra Jadeja bettered. He dropped Narine twice off successive deliveries by K Asif. Narine was then on six.
At the end of Powerplay, Narine was on 24 off 16 balls with KKR on 56/2. More importantly, Gill was showing the promise that got him noticed in the under-19 World Cup.