IPL Season 5 - Match 16 Pune Vs CSK

DLF IPL Season 5 - Match 16

Pune Warriors Vs Chennai Super Kings at Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium, Pune.

On paper CSK looked very strong and were clearly the favourites to win this match.  But with Dada leading Pune, you can never take things for granted.  CSK chose to include Yo Mahesh in place of Jakati and Nuwan Kulasekara in place of injured Doug Bollinger.  Pune Warriors strengthened their bowling by including Murali Kartik in place of out of form Manish Pandey.

Chennai Super Kings won the toss and elected to bat first.  Du Plessis took majority of the strike and scored at will.  But Murali Vijay was out early as usual, this time making just 8 runs off 11 deliveries.  Raina joined Du Plessis and made brisk 20 runs before getting out trying to hit a six.  After the fall of Du Plessis, Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja steadied CSK innings.  Dhoni was very slow managing a strike rate of around 100 when much was needed from him, that too when CSK had lot of wickets and big hitters waiting outside.  Dhoni was sluggish in his approach.  Ravindra Jadeja however played beautifully, making for Dhoni's sluggishness.  When Albie Morkel finally arrived at the crease after Dhoni's departure, the match was almost over.  Bravo managed to get a boundary off the last delivery.  Poor planning from CSK resulted in a gettable total of 155/5.  Little bit of acceleration after 15 overs would have enabled CSK reach 175-180 runs which could have been a winning total.  Rahul Sharma bowled brilliantly to capture 2/16 from 3 overs in an innings dominated by batsmen.

Pune started their chase brilliantly.  Robin Uthappa was promoted up the order to join Jesse Ryder.  They were going brilliantly at around 10 runs per over when a needless second run cost Robin Uthappa's wicket.  Ganguly joined Ryder.  He opened his account with a brilliant cover drive and was going well scoring 16 off 16.  While trying to go for a second after a misfield at the deep, Ganguly was also run out.  Samuels joined Ryder and was never comfortable.  He was bowled for for 8 after struggling for 15 deliveries.  Big hitting Steven Smith joined Ryder and they kept building the innings by hitting boundaries at crucial juncture.  But brilliant bowling and fielding from CSK increased the required run rate to 11 and even 12.  It needed big hitting from Steven Smith to seal the match in favour of Pune Warriors.

Pune Warriors won by 7 wickets to climb to the top of the Points Table.  CSK went down further to the 6th spot as a result of today's defeat.