Chennai Super Kings beat Rajasthan Royals and cruised to a comprehensive 64 run victory in Pune. With this Chennai have jumped to the top of the Indian Premier League standings as on Friday.
This was CSK’s third victory in four games as they beat Kolkata Knight Riders, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kings XI Punjab to take a leap towards the top of the table as they had a better run rate.
Royals, on the other hand, remained on the fifth spot with only four points from five games.
CSK posted a mammoth 204/5 as Shane Watson scored 106 in his third IPL hindered against his former team.
CSK came out with fantastic bowling limiting the Rajasthan Royals to 140 in 18.3 overs. The bowlers who were amongst the wickets were Dwayne Bravo (2/16), Karn Sharma (2/13), Shardul Thakur (2/18) and Deepak Chahar (2/30) sharing eight wickets while Shane Watson and Imran Tahir chipped in with a wicket each.
Royals lost three wickets in the first five overs and found themselves in great trouble. Heinrich Klaasen was bowled by Thakur for seven. He was making his IPL debut and went for only 7.
Sanju Samson found Karn at deep backward square leg off Chahar as Royals were reduced to 25/2 in three overs.
Then skipper Rahane became Chahar’s second victim in the fifth over. Rahane only managed to score 16, which included a boundary and a six. Royals were thus struggling at 32/3 in 4.3 overs.
Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler tried to revive the run chase but the boundaries dried up for the visitors, in fact no boundary was scored during the period of 3-7 overs. Buttler broke the drought by hitting a four and a six off Imran Tahir in the eighth over.
Stokes too did not last long and was caught at the mid-wicket boundary off Tahir in the 14th over. He scored 45 off 37 balls with the help of a six and three fours.
Brilliant all-rounder Watson propelled CSK to 204/5 with a quick hundred.
Watson was dropped in the very first over and he cost Royals heavily as he slammed 106 from 57 balls. The 36 years old Australian was in his best form in the match.
Watson shared a 50-run stand with fellow opener Ambati Rayudu (12) and then raised an 81-run partnership for the second wicket with comeback-man Suresh Raina, who hit a fiery 46 off 29 balls with nine boundaries.
Brief Scores: Chennai Super Kings 204/5 (Shane Watson 106; Shreyas Gopal 3/20) beat Rajasthan Royals 140 all-out (Ben Stokes 45; Karn Sharma 2/13) by 64 runs
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