The much anticipated Indian Premier League (IPL) opener ended up with a comfortable Kolkata Knight Rider (KKR) win in the end. However,former Indian captain MS Dhoni made a statement in his first match after giving up the captaincy of Chennai Super Kings (CSK). Playing first time as just a normal player for CSK, Dhoni smashed a 38 balls 50 to give some respectability to the Chennai score but it wasn’t enough.
The day started with Umesh Yadav, who has played little IPL during last 2 years, blowing away CSK’s new opening pair Ruturaj Gaikwad and Davon Conway. Robin Uthappa tried to fight back with some aggressive stroke-play but soon he was out stumped against the impressive Varun Chakravarthy. Uthappa’s dismissal was quickly followed by a horror mix-up resulting in Rayudu’s run out and then Shivam Dube was caught out by Andre Russell’s pace.
That brought Chennai’s 2 full time captains in their entire history together as MS Dhoni joined Ravindra Jadeja in the middle. After a very slow start, the duo combined for 47 runs in the last 3 overs with Dhoni leading the charge.
However, the target they eventually managed to set, 132, turned out to be too easy for Kolkata Knight Riders. Ajinkya Rahane, who has faced a lot of criticism over the past 2 years for his Test form, gave KKR a very solid start with a well constructed 44 from 34 balls.With useful contributions from everyone else in the top order, KKR managed to get to their target comfortably with 9 balls to spare.
In the absence of Deepak Chahar, CSK missed someone who can get wickets upfront in the power-play, and even though Bravo picked up 3 wickets, it was never going to be enough while defending a small target of 132.
KKR next play Royal Challengers Bangalore on the 30th of March, while CSK will look to get their first win on the board against new team Lucknow on the 31st of March.
