Chennai maul Delhi to seal play-off spot
Chennai assured themselves of a top-four spot with a clinical 18-run win over ordinary Delhi at their home ground dislodging Mumbai from the top of IPL standings. Delhi expectedly did not put much of a fight in absence of Virender Sehwag and in the end it was one-way traffic all the way. The home team blasted their way to mammoth 176 runs after Dhoni chose to bat on a typical Chepuak pitch.
In reply, Delhi batsmen tried to stay in the hunt but the quality of Chennai’s bowling coupled with the unbelievable fielding made it very difficult for them to get anywhere near the target. Naman Ojha and David Warner began on a brisk note, Delhi raced to 30 for no loss after 2.4 overs. Once, the partnership was broken, the Delhi challenged evaporated like water in the sweltering Chennai heat. Irfan Pathan and Venugopal Rao did help their averages with 44 and 30 runs respectively; the match had long gone out of their hand.
Chennai bowlers have relished bowling in their backyard all season as they have plenty of quality spin bowling options among their ranks. Ashwin once again was miserly and bagged couple of wickets to make his bowling figures look all the more impressive. West Indian all rounder Dwayne Bravo also got a brace from his bowling effort.
Earlier, Chennai followed their Jaipur performance with another superlative show with the bat. On a pitch that offered lot of assistance to the slow bowlers, the pace heavy Delhi attack made an early breakthrough, Michael Hussey caught in front of the wicket by Irfan Pathan’s straight delivery. Murli Vijay carried with his good form from the last outing and hit an elegant 33 ball 35 even though he was very lucky and got two lives off successive deliveries, Stand-in skipper James Hopes grassed a catch that should have been taken and left armer S Nadeem dropped a sitter off his own bowling.
Finally Vijay fell in the eleventh over with the score reading 68 runs. Captain-cool Dhoni came in next fresh from a decent knock in the last match. His first shot was a streaky boundary off a top edge. But, he took no time to settle down and crashed one ball after another into the crowd. He combined with another man in good touch, S Badrinath to put on a match-winning 96 runs in little more than 9 overs. They hit the ball with fearsome power and a few cute shots made batting look ridiculously easy. Dhoni never took his foot off the gas while as Badri tried to give the strike to his captain during the early stages of the partnership. Once, he got his eye in, it was firepower from both ends. The last two overs put the match out of Delhi reach as the duo looted 37 runs off Ajit Agarkar and Pathan.
Delhi badly missed the services of a wicket-taking quality spinner in their bowling attack, although Nadeem did a good job conceding only 26 runs in 4 overs. Another youngster who impressed with his pace and temperament was pacer Varun Aaron who crossed the 140 kph regularly. He hustled the batsmen with his brisk pace and had notable figures of 20 for 1 in his quota of overs. The omission of Morne Morkel from the playing eleven only made it difficult to contain the rampaging Chennai batsmen.
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