Jos Buttler scored three boundaries on the trot in a Piyush Chawla over in Abu Dhabi on Monday. Well, one of them came through a mis-field from Sam Curran but Buttler’s majority of the innings that he played against CSK on Saturday seemed as if the English batsman was playing on a different strip.
Almost every recognised batsman had faced some problem in batting at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium on Monday but not Buttler. He kept his concentration well and didn’t go for any innovative stroke unlike Uthappa.
Chasing a mere 126, RR were reduced to 28/3 with the likes of Ben Stokes, Robin Uthappa, and Sanju Samson back in the hut. Captain Steve Smith obviously had to play a cautious inning as another blow would have pushed Rajasthan on the backfoot. But the former Australian captain held the innings well along with Buttler and the two compiled an unbeaten stand of 97 runs for the fourth wicket to win the match by 7 wickets. Buttler remained unbeaten at 70.
Chennai on the other hand began the proceedings well as Deepak Chahar and Josh Hazlewood’s economical bowling kept things tight for CSK. Chahar got the wickets of Stokes and Samson while Hazlewood removed Uthappa.
Earlier, after opting to bat first, Dhoni’s side didn’t really get a start that they were looking for. Sam Curran and Faf du Plessis opened the innings but the former South African captain departed early and Shane Watson who came in at number three followed him later.
Chennai lost wickets at regular interval and were left tottering at 56/4 when captain Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja tried to steady the ship for the side. The two batsmen put up a partnership of 51 runs for the fifth wicket before MS was undone, courtesy a runout for 28 off 28 balls.
Jadeja though tried to gather few more runs but Chennai only managed to score 18 more in the next 14 balls. Jadeja remained unbeaten at 35 off 30.
CSK’s scoresheet looked really dismal as almost every batsmen scored runs at a strike-rate of under 100. Ambati Rayudu and Kedar Jadhav struggled the most in the middle. Rayudu just got 13 off 19 while Jadhav scored 4* off 7.
For Rajasthan, Jofra Archer, Kartik Tyagi, Shreyas Gopal and Rahul Tewatia picked up a wicket apiece.
With this defeat. CSK have now moved to the bottom of the points table and it looks difficult for them to qualify for the play-offs. They have suffered 7 defeats in 10 matches and only have 6 points to their name while RR now have 4 wins from 10 games under their belt.
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