As the 2022 Indian Premier League is left only with two more games before playoffs stage begins, Rajasthan Royals secured second position in the points table in the competition conducted at the league stage. Lets look at CSK vs RR Match Summary.
The 68th match, which was held at Brabourne Stadium on Friday, ended with Rajasthan Royals registering a victory against the defending champions, Chennai Super Kings. Pathetically, this victory was achieved by the Royals’ despite CSK’s allrounder – Moeen Ali – showcased a classic batting by scoring 93 runs in just 57 balls.
After winning the toss, CSK opted to bat first. The opening batters Ruturaj Gaikwad returned to the pavilion by scoring 2 runs and Devon Conway for 16 runs. The English cricketer who came at first down made the opponent team to reel under pressure with his obnoxious knocks.
He started attacking the bowlers and used the Powerplay overs to his maximum level. His score 93 runs include 3 sixes and 13 fours. As Ali was continuing to perform, there was no stable partnership that can help the team to go in a more aggressive way.
After Narayan Jagadeesan and Ambati Rayudu left the crease by scoring a single digit number, the skipper MS Dhoni helped Ali in attacking the bowlers with his supportive batting, thus adding good runs on the scoreboard. After Dhoni got dismissed by Yuzvendra Chahal and Ali by Obed McCoy in the 19th and 20th overs, the total runs scored by CSK was 150 for the loss of six wickets.
The Royals’ batting line up was seemingly more balanced when compared to the Chennai franchise. The opening batsman, Yashasvi Jaiswal, started attacking the bowlers since the beginning. He added one half century to his scorecard with his contribution tuning to 59 runs off 44 balls.
The orange cap top 1 contender, Jos Buttler, couldn’t show his batting spirit in this match and he returned to pavilion with a single digit score of 2 runs. The skipper, Sanju Samson, and match-winning performer, Devdutt Padikkal, too didn’t make progress in this game where the former scored only 15 runs and the latter adding only 3 runs.
It was Ravichandran Ashwin who made the team to challenge the CSK team when the things were not in favour of Royals. He showed an attacking performance by meeting all his team’s expectations to see him perform as an allrounder.
Ashwin scored 40 runs off 23 balls and remained not out in the game. After Jaiswal was dismissed, Shimron Hetmyer came to the crease but he stayed for a brief period and scored just six runs. The match ended in favour of Rajasthan Royals with Riyan Parag (10 runs) and Ashwin standing at the crease.
Speaking during the post-match presentation, CSK skipper MS Dhoni made some remarks on how the team lost the good batting momentum with Ali’s attacking batting.
“What we need to realize is that we are playing a batter light. Once we lost those quick wickets, Moeen had to change his momentum. If one of the batters had batted with him, he could have continued his momentum. It gives liberty to the batter coming in to play the shots or play the game. The roles and responsibilities got slightly lost when we lost those quick wickets and that made it really difficult. If we would have gone hard and lost a wicket there, we might have not had anything to defend tonight,” he said, adding that the team was falling 10-15 runs short but of course, you have to bowl well after that.
Rajasthan Royals captain Sanju Samson said it feels really good with the way the team played in the league phase.
“Almost everyone has stood up throughout and we deserve this second shot for the finals. They started well and it was hard to stop Moeen Ali. It was okay to go for runs but we knew that we could come back stronger. I didn’t expect us to come back that well though,” he said.
Commenting on Ashwin’s allrounder performance, Samson said Ash (bhai) has been batting well. “I want to tell you that before the season started the amount of hours he batted in the nets, we were expecting something special from him. He’s turned into a great all-rounder for us and we’re really happy for him,” he lauded.
Player of the match:
Ravichandran Ashwin (RR) – 1/28 (4) & 40 (23) not out.
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