During the strategic time-out interval after 13 overs of Chennai Super Kings innings, Ashish Nehra gently strolled to the Gujarat Titans huddle. He was unusually not in a rush and knew exactly who to talk to. After the customary pep talk to the team, the coach took Mohit Sharma aside, put his arm around his shoulders and spoke at length before Hardik Pandya and Rashid Khan joined the conversation. The CSK scoreboard read 99/2 at that stage but the pitch was showing enough signs of slowing down and Nehra knew Mohit was the man to do some finger magic in the latter half and not allow the opposition to get away. The crafty seamer did what the pitch required, used the cutters to good effect and conceded only 15 runs in his last two and also picked the wicket of MS Dhoni.
Dhoni, much to the disappointment of the capacity crowd, lasted just two deliveries but spent enough time to realise what would work on this track.
IPL 2023 Qualifier 1: GT vs CSK Highlights
MS Dhoni, sticky surfaces at Chepauk and finger spinners
We have heard this before. We have seen this before and saw it again on Tuesday. Defending a fighting 172, CSK never allowed GT innings to get going and kept striking at regular intervals. The finger spinners Ravindra Jadeja and Maheesh Theekshana were the wreckers-in-chief as together they picked four wickets and conceded 46 runs in the eight overs they bowled.
Many giant sides have found themselves in this situation vs CSK in the past and not many have come out on the winning side. Dhoni is a shrewd operator in these tricky chases on surfaces offering purchase for the finger spinners and GT was another name added to the list of teams who have succumbed in similar situations. Cool as a cucumber behind the stamps, Dhoni seemed to have it all figured in his head. GT did try different things with promotions of Dasun Shanaka, possibly to counter his country mate Theekshana, and David Miller, most likely to alter some lines with left-right combination, but nothing worked, and Dhoni had it all figured.
Unlike most captains in the 2023 edition of IPL, Dhoni didn’t go Moeen Ali’s way from the other end when Miller walked out to bat and persisted with Jadeja, who was extracting venomous turn from this strip. The move not only worked for Shanaka but also for Miller as the left-armer sent both back to the hut in quick succession and killed any hope of a GT recovery. Shanaka, in an attempt to put the heat back on CSK, played a wild reverse-sweep straight to Theekshana at short-third while Miller was undone by a fullish delivery which gripped and turned into the left-hander to disturb the woodwork.
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Jadeja, who finished with brilliant figures of 4-0-18-2, kept hitting the good length spot and his faster ones extracted more from the strip. Theekshana too followed a similar template and the two in tandem were like a mirror image of the same bowler. Yes, lack of dew did help CSK but the pair of Theekshana and Jadeja put on a real show and showcased the ideal lengths and speeds for a surface like this.
Fingers trump wrist
On the eve of the match, all the talk was around GT’s wrist-spin duo of Rashid Khan and Noor Ahmad and how they could be the real deal at Chepauk. In anticipation of dew and a move to give the best possible conditions to his spinners, Hardik chose to bowl first but the dew never arrived. CSK batters negated the threat and didn’t look bogged down against the two. Hardik wasn’t the only one who wanted to bowl as Dhoni too was looking to go that way to counter the possible dew factor but it turned out to be a good toss to lose as the conditions became ideal for CSK’s finger spinners in the second half of the innings.
“The pitch is slightly sticky, need to concentrate on ones and twos. I wanted to drag the length back and not give them room to play shots. There is no dew at all,” Mohit Sharma said at the mid-inning interaction with the broadcasters.
No dew at all was the key comment there for most of the second innings and towels were out only to wipe the sweat off the fingers and not much work was done on the ball. It was down to the bowling unit to just stick to their plans, keep pulling the length back, something which Mohit successfully did in the first innings, and wait for the batter to play a false stroke.
CSK and the Chepauk challenge
Everyone, from Deepak Chahar to Tushar Deshpande to Matheesha Pathirana to the spin twins, followed it to the T and helped CSK register a win, their first over the on-song Gujarat Titans, who had beaten the MS Dhoni-led unit in their last three encounters. If there was one team which could have stopped the GT run on tiring surfaces it was CSK and if there was one venue which was likely to witness that was Chepauk.
It was early Diwali in Chennai when Mohammed Shami was dismissed off the last ball by Pathirana as fireworks went up and the crowd went absolutely berserk with “CSK, CSK” chants. They came here for a win, got the win and will now see MS Dhoni-led CSK in their tenth IPL final appearance on May 28.
Brief Scores: Chennai Super Kings: 172 for 7 in 20 overs (Ruturaj Gaikwad 60; Mohammed Shami 2/28).
Gujarat Titans: 157 all out in 20 overs (Shubman Gill 42; Ravindra Jadeja 2/18, Deepak Chahar 2/29).
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