Focus on damage control as Chennai await bowling reinforcements

Punjab and Chennai are coming out of a similar contest but contrasting results in their first game. Both teams would have been happy with their score during the innings break. But by the end of the game, the difference between the win and a defeat for Punjab was one mistimed shot. For Chennai, there seemed only one result possible once they began their bowling innings.

For the second consecutive season now, Chennai are just about managing to compete with whatever they have. It added to their woes when their premier fast bowler, Josh Hazlewood, whom they would have needed on the batting-friendly decks like the Wankhede, bailed out a week before the tournament. His replacement, Jason Behrendorff, will be available after the first three games. The other option, Lungi Ngidi, will be out of the quarantine after Chennai’s game against Punjab. For now, the Super Kings will have to continue to hang on to what they have.

In the hindsight, it is not an unfair assessment that Chennai could have done better with the bat against Delhi to assist their weak bowling attack. Although, it was heartening to see that even after no cricket of the IPL standard since 2019, Suresh Raina was back at being the orchestrator of Chennai’s batting innings. But, in a side with Shardul Thakur as a batsman at number 10, there should not be an ounce of circumspection while batting. 

There is a case for Chennai repeating an experiment they briefly tried last season. Their most impactful batsman in the game against Delhi, Sam Curran, should ideally get to play more than 15 balls. With form in international cricket also in his favour, Chennai can look to consider him to open once more. In the end, their Powerplay score of 33 for two was the difference between what they got (188) versus what MS Dhoni felt that a team batting first in a 7:30 PM game on pitches like these should target (200).

Lessons for the Aussie quicks from Bravo

The fact that Punjab got a score of 221 without any contribution from Nicholas Pooran should send shivers in the opposition camp. For the neutral, they are perhaps the most watchable batting line-up this year. But the roof nearly came tumbling down on them in their game against Rajasthan after Sanju Samson’s never-ending blitzkrieg. 

Punjab chose to include both the Aussie quicks – Jhye Richardson and Riley Meredith – in their XI against the Royals. It proved to be a forgetful debut for them with a combined figures of 2/104 in their eight overs. At times, it is easy to point out what a particular bowler did wrong to end up receiving the batsmen’s wrath. But, the pitch map of Richardson and Meredith paints a different story.

Apart from the yorkers that Richardson was able to execute with accuracy, no matter what lengths they tried, it turned out to be a nightmare for them on a placid deck and small boundaries at the Wankhede. With Samson going berserk and Jos Buttler initially targetting Meredith, the duo could not come up with answers to tilt the tide in their favour.

In the end, it was not about what they tried, but what they did not. Dwayne Bravo laid down a lesson on how to bowl on belters like this, two games earlier.

The lesson here is hidden in the lines and not the lengths. While the Aussie quicks tried the hard lengths bowled in the channel around off, Bravo chose to keep the ball wide, not allowing the batsmen to get a full swing of the bat. Bravo bowled as many wide full-tosses as the number of off-cutters (6) in their game against Delhi.

As suggested by their pitch-map above, when Richardson and Meredith went wide themselves, most of the balls were either dot or resulted in a single. 

While there is a common consensus that the Super Kings might struggle on batting-friendly wickets, their head coach Stephen Fleming felt that playing five games at a venue might help. “You get to learn a lot, like tonight, bowling second was difficult, the dew was heavy, so we got to find a way if we are in that position again to shut a team down and Bravo showed us how to do it”, Fleming said after the loss against Delhi.

Fleming’s positivity though did not come in his way of admitting that they are a Chennai based side and will need factors like toss to go in their favour. Their adversaries in the second game will relish playing on wickets like the Wankhede with a batting line-up like theirs. Considering the natural intent of Chennai’s batsmen, if Punjab can go anywhere near what they scored against Rajasthan, Chennai will have to look at factors other than the toss to target for their loss.

Probable XIs

Punjab – KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Chris Gayle, Nicholas Pooran, Deepak Hooda, Shahrukh Khan, Jhye Richardson, Riley Meredith, Murugan Ashwin, Mohammed Shami, Arshdeep Singh

Chennai - Ruturaj Gaikwad, Faf du Plessis, Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Moeen Ali, MS Dhoni (c/wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Sam Curran, Dwayne Bravo, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar