Ravindra Jadeja’s amazing spin bowling display helped his team Chennai Super Kings to beat Rajasthan Royals by 7 runs in the 10th Game of IPL 2014 at Dubai International Cricket Stadium, Dubai.
Earlier Shane Watson, the captain of RR, won the toss and elected to field first. He managed to keep pressure on Chennai Super Kings batsmen in early overs of the match by rotating his main bowlers magnificently. CSK were at 32/0 after first five overs, as the openers were playing with utmost cautious at that time.
But Brendon McCullum (6 runs, 10 balls) lost his wicket on 6th over off Faulkner’s bowling and Suresh Raina (4 runs, 9 balls) followed him quite soon. In the meanwhile Dwayne Smith played beautifully and scored 50 runs in just 28 balls hitting 6 boundaries and 3 sixes.
Both MS Dhoni and Faf du Plessis failed to make a solid impact, and thus Chennai team found themselves in deep trouble after 12th over. Ravindra Jadeja joined the party and made 36 runs from 33 balls. His innings provided some sort of stability to the CSK innings, and finally they put up 140/6 after 20 overs.
Rajat Bhatia was the prime bowler for Rajasthan Royals by picking up 2 crucial wickets and conceding only 13 runs in his 4 overs. Pravin Tambe, Stuart Binny and James Faulkner shared 1 wicket each.
Rajasthan Royals lost their opener Abhishek Nayar early in the form of run out, but Ajinkya Rahane (15 runs, 12 balls) and the ‘wonder boy’ Sanju Samson (16 runs, 16 balls) were looking in good touch before losing their wickets on the bowling of CSK’s spinners. Even the captain Shane Watson and all-rounder Stuart Binny too failed to match-winning performance due to awesome bowling display from CSK team. Rajasthan Royals were at 56/4 after their 10 overs.
At the late part of the game Rajat Bhatia (23 off 20 balls) and Dhawal Kulkarni (28 off 19 balls) tried their level best to snatch a win from Chennai’s grip. Eventually Kulkarni hit two sixes in the last over bowled by Ashwin, but the later kept his cool and ultimately RR lost the match by 7 runs. They scored 133 all-out in 19.5 overs.
Ravindra Jadeja was the star bowler from the Chennai team, as he picked up 4 wickets. Ben Hilfenhaus, Ishwar Pandey, Mohit Sharma and R Ashwin shared one wicket each. It was a very low scoring game; bowlers of both the teams produced a good match for their respective teams.
Ravindra Jadeja was chosen as the Man of the Match for his all-rounder performance of crucial 36 runs and
4 very important wickets.
Click here to read about Yes Bank Maximum Sixes, Kanna keep calm & Man of the Match award.