CHENNAI SUPER KINGS defeated RAJASTHAN ROYALS by 5 wickets at JSCA International Stadium Complex, Ranchi to reclaim the top spot in points table of IPL 7. Shane Watson (C) the RR skipper won the toss and elected to bat first. Ankit Sharma and Shane Watson opened the batting for Rajasthan and they started it steadily. Sharma and Watson scored 30 of 27 balls and 51 of 36 balls respectively. Anyway, after that any player except Stuart Binny faile to give any formidable batting performance. He scored 22 runs of 17 balls.
CSK bowlers did a brilliant job to restrict RR to 148 runs which is not a big total in a ground like JSCA International Stadium. Mohit Sharma yet again gave a decent performance with the ball as he took 3 wickets and conceded 31 runs. Ravindra Jadeja bowled an extraordinary spell as he gave only 18 runs in his allotted 4 overs by taking 2 wickets. Samuel Badree and Ravichandran Ashwin shared two wickets equally.
While chasing not so big score CSK did not started it well as they lost 2 wickets of Brendon McCullum (6 of 3 balls) and Suresh Raina (2 of 3 balls) early. But once again Dwayne Smith played a responsible innings of 44 runs in just 35 balls. However, in the back end of the innings Faf du Plessis kept the momentum for CSK as he scored 38 of 39 balls and guess what MS Dhoni (C) (W) did it again, he finishes the things off in his style. He scored valuable 26 runs in 16 balls and won the match for CSK with 2 balls to spare.
Ankit Sharma gave an all round performance as he took 2 wickets with the ball also by just considering 20 runs in his limited 4 overs. But that couldn’t help RR to win the match as other bowlers of RR failed to support him in a decent way. Anyway, James Faulkner, Kevon Cooper and Rajat Bhatia claimed 1 wicket each.
Thats it, Ravindra Jadeja was given the Man of the Match award for his all round performance as he scored valuable 11 runs in the near end of the innings and claimed two extraordinary wickets with the ball also.