CHENNAI CRUISE
Harbhajan, Tahir and Jadeja put RCB in a spin in IPL opener
Defending champions Chennai Super Kings showed their might as they beat Virat Kohli-led Royal Challengers Bangalore by a comfortable seven-wicket margin in the Indian Premier League 2019’s opening game at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium on Saturday.
Replying to RCB’s paltry total of 70 runs, Chennai cruised home scoring 71 for three wickets in 17.4 overs.
Earlier, MS Dhoni’s decision to bat first on winning the toss proved to be a masterstroke, as the spin trio of Harbhajan Singh (3/20), Imran Tahir (3/9) and Ravindra Jadeja (2/15) struck in tandem to bowl out RCB for a paltry 70 runs.
Such was the dominance of CSK bowlers that half of the Bangalore batsmen were back to the dressing room with just 45 runs on board in 9.2 overs.
First of all, off-spinner Harbhajan Singh rattled the visiting top order before Imran Tahir joined the party, rocking the middle-order while Ravindra Jadeja also jolted Bangalore on couple of occasions.
Bangalore openers Virat Kohli (6) and Parthiv Patel started cautiously but the visiting skipper, trying to pull a shorter delivery from Harbhajan, only handed an easy catch to Jadeja at deep midwicket.
Harbhajan then struck twice to pack back incoming batsman Moeen Ali (9) and a dangerous AB de Villiers (9).
Soon, the visitors lost their fourth wicket as newcomer Shimron Hetmyer tried for a quick single. However, there was no response from his partner Parthiv and he was stranded in the middle. Suresh Raina, who was at cover, took no time in hurling the ball to Dhoni who got ample time to knocks off the bails.
Tahir was the next to strike as a Shivam Dube’s thick edge on his delivery landed safely in the hands of Shane Watson at slip to send Bangalore reeling at 45/5.
With just the addition of five runs, it was Jadeja’s turn, who dismissed Colin de Grandhomme (4) before Tahir struck twice in quick succession to make Bangalore’s scorecard read 59/8.
It was a cakewalk for the Chennai bowlers then as Jadeja accounted for the wicket of Umesh Yadav and Dwayne Bravo put the final nail in the coffin, sending back Parthiv to wrap up Bangalore innings. Parthiv was the top scorer for Bangalore with 29 runs and nobody else was able to touch the double-digit score. —