ANALYSIS
Follow UsYou’d be lying if you said that you didn’t fear the worst for CSK, just 30 minutes into the match. Inside the powerplay they lost half the side, including their two best batters from the first half, and the Mumbai bowlers had a spring in their step. The wounds of 2020 looked like they’d been reopened in the very first game, and a Sharjah-esque finish to the encounter seemed inevitable.
Which is precisely why this win would feel so special and important for Dhoni and his men. They dug in, refused to give up and won a game which they convincingly would have lost last season. It is an encounter which reasserted that the CSK of 2020 is now a distant memory.
Forget the two points. Forget that CSK are now top. There are far bigger talking points that should serve as ominous signs for the rest of the field.
Ruturaj Gaikwad’s watershed moment
Should Ruturaj Gaikwad go on to become a powerhouse in the IPL in the next half-a-decade, chances are that he’d look back on this knock as the single biggest turning point.
Indeed, he’d struck 5 fifties in 13 innings prior to today. But on all five occasions, he needed support systems. In each of his first five IPL fifties, Gaikwad had at least one other top three batter post a 35+ score at a healthy strike rate that allowed him to glide through the innings. Almost all of them also came on pretty good batting wickets.
But today was different. By the end of the sixth over, he was the only specialist batsman remaining. The wicket was sluggish, the Mumbai bowlers smelt blood and it was the kind of day in which he’d have been forgiven for wilting under pressure.
Yet he didn’t. Gaikwad found a way and displayed maturity, composure and stroke-making that suggested that he’d leveled up - significantly.
There were two things that stood out in Gaikwad’s innings today: his decision-making and his equanimity.
The former shone through in his scoring areas. On an uncharacteristically sticky Dubai wicket where it was dangerous to play on the up, Gaikwad targeted the leg-side, in particular the mid-wicket region. He was quick to learn from the mistakes made by du Plessis and Moeen Ali - both of whom perished playing on the up - and he reaped dividends for the same.
The latter, which turned out to be the most impressive part of his knock, overflowed in the way he paced his innings. He started very slowly (which is the norm with him) but switched gears seamlessly.
It is one thing to do that when a du Plessis or a Rayudu is sizzling at the other end, but today CSK were 35/4 after 9 overs. There was simply no margin for error, yet Gaikwad delivered. That he took 18 runs in 9 balls of Jasprit Bumrah at the death should tell you everything you need to know.
Prior to Sunday, the world saw Gaikwad as a mere sidekick. He will wake up on Monday knowing that will no longer be the case.
The DJ Bravo second-wind that could be a blessing for CSK
Along with Gaikwad’s 88*, it will be Dwayne Bravo’s 3/25 with the ball that will make the headlines. But the importance of Bravo’s cameo with the bat cannot be stressed enough, for it could have positive implications for CSK’s title-quest.
Walking in with three overs left, Bravo smashed 23 off 8 balls, including three humongous sixes, and completely swung the momentum in CSK’s favour.
Now, you could say that it was merely “DJ Bravo doing DJ Bravo things”. But, taking his recent performances into account, could it be something more? Could we actually be witnessing Bravo gaining a second-wind with the bat?
Between April 10, 2018, and October 14, 2020, Bravo averaged a mere 16 with the bat in the IPL, getting dismissed once every 13 balls and striking at just over 120. His stocks had fallen to the extent that he was seen as a #9 by the franchise.
But in two knocks this season, Bravo has posted scores of 20(8) and 23(8), playing the type of classic cameos he was once renowned for. His 23 today was his highest score in the IPL in over two years.
Indeed, making a judgement out of two knocks would be naive, but what adds weight to the ‘second-wind’ argument is how he’s fared with the bat in all T20s this year. So far in 2021, Bravo averages 24.18 with the bat. Since the start of 2013, only in two calendar years has he averaged more.
The 37-year-old played multiple valuable hands for St Kitts and Nevis Patriots in the CPL and also showed his class against Australia where, in the second T20I in Gros Islet, batting at No.5, he stitched a 103-run stand with Shimron Hetmyer to help Windies post 196. The veteran displayed a similar sense of assurity during his stay in the middle on Sunday.
Should Bravo continue inspiring the same confidence with the bat, it will not only add more firepower to CSK’s lower-order, but will also embolden those above him to bat with more freedom.
The nous and consistency of the CSK seamers
As stated numerous times above, the pitch on Sunday was not your typical Dubai wicket. The ball started stopping as early as the second over of the game, and the wicket was two-paced. What this meant was that the Good-length delivery became super effective; the ball either skidded-on or stopped.
The Mumbai pacers used this tactic to great effect in the powerplay, bowling 25/36 deliveries in the 6m-10m range, and bore fruit: by the end of the sixth over, CSK were 24/4.
Bizarrely, however, MI eschewed the strategy with time, and the last 10 overs saw their seamers bowl just 8 balls in the ‘good’ length despite those deliveries costing them just 6 runs. They paid the price for the same, with their seamers conceding a staggering 76 off 6 overs in the second half of the innings, predominantly aiming to bowl full. (19/36 balls were fuller than 6m).
The CSK seamers, in contrast, bowled almost thrice as much as the MI seamers in the ‘good length’ area in the second half and reaped rich rewards. They learnt from MI’s mistakes, stuck to their guns and only conceded 63 runs off 9 overs in the second half, while also accounting for 4 wickets.
This strategy also made the ‘surprise’ fuller balls far more lethal, none serving as a better example than Hazlewood’s nip-backer to dismiss Kieron Pollard.
In the first half, the pace-unit proved to be the biggest weak link of CSK. Dhoni will know that there is a long, long way to go, but on a wicket where there was little to no movement, he would certainly be delighted by the consistency and smarts his seamers showed.
