Faf du Plessis fashioned a splendid win for Chennai Super Kings against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the qualifier 1 play-off match of the Vivo IPl 11 here on Tuesday. Chosen ahead of Sam Billings, the South African captain playing his fifth match in this year’s league, lifted a straight six off Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the first ball of the 40th over of the match and delivered a terrific win for CSK to have a shot at the title for the third time.
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
In the end Shardul Thakur enjoying the luck of streaky shots contributed his bit, but du Plessis, who saw fellow teammates cave into pressure and some skilful bowling, showed the calmness and capacity to play a lone hand and lead his team in distress to victory.
Until du Plessis stepped in an authoritative manner to change the course of the match, the Sunrisers seam and spin attack, in particular, leg spinner Rashid Khan seemed to have sealed the fate of the match reducing CSK to 92 for seven.
The Afghan’s fascinating slow wrist-spin exhibition came after the Sunrisers seamers, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Siddharth Kaul had knocked over the in-form CSK top order including that of a Suresh Raina in great touch.
On a roll against the Sunrisers in the preliminary rounds, the Chennai side was in control after it chose to field upon winning the toss. Things did not forebode well for the Sunrisers right from the first delivery sent down by an efficient manipulator of the seam in Deepak Chahar. His off-stump line was just about tempting for Shikhar Dhawan to deploy his bat in a horizontal manner and he under-edged the cut shot on to his stumps.
Kane Williamson, upon whose fantastic accumulation of runs has been chiefly instrumental in his team advancing to the play offs stage, counter-attacked hitting a flurry of boundary shots. But in a matter of minutes fortunes swung back in the Chennai team’s favour when Shreevats Goswami, Williamson and Shakib Al Hasan departed in quick succession with the last two becoming on- side victims, nicking the ball to the keeper. The Chennai side took firm grip when Manish Pandey and Yusuf Pathan made left the scene of action.
Winning selection in the team for the second time this season, Carlos Brathwaite launched a blistering attack in the last three overs, clobbering four sixes. He made his IPL best score of an unbeaten 43, but more importantly took his side from a dismal looking 88 for 6 to score that set a target of seven an over for a team looking to enter the final for the seventh time.
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