With a new captain at the helm, the Chennai Super Kings got off to a winning start in front of a boisterous Chepauk crowd on Friday night. For the eighth time in a row, Royal Challengers Bengaluru fell in Chennai as four CSK rookies, including Mustafizur Rahman, dismissed four of the team’s top five players in ten balls.
On a track that slowed down later in the evening, Rachin Ravindra, who was playing in his debut IPL match, contributed 37 off 15 balls at a strike rate of 246.66 to the victory. Ruturaj Gaikwad’s innings was ended on the sixteenth ball by impact player Yash Dayal, who made his debut as the skipper of CSK by smashing a four off the opening ball.
Shivam Dube, who replaced Mustafizur as CSK’s impact player while he healed from his injury, battled to score 15 off 16 balls. But he soon stepped up the pace, scoring an unbeaten 34 off 28 balls to help CSK win, and Ravindra Jadeja added an unbeaten 25 off 17. When he handed Gaikwad the keys to the CSK kingdom, MS Dhoni may have expected this, but he was unable to take part in the chase.
Had Matheesha Pathirana, CSK’s death-overs specialist, been well, Mustafizur might not have even been on the pitch. His final score was 29–4–4-0.Since a counterattacking partnership of 95 runs for the sixth wicket off just 50 balls ended the batting on the last ball of the innings,