Spin-twins Ravindra Jadeja and ‘Turbanator’ Harbhajan Singh came to the party on Saturday evening at Pune’s Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) Stadium as the combined to strangulate and pick five wickets among themselves against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), enabling Chennai Super Kings (CSK) to romp home to a comfortable 6-wicket victory in 18 overs.

‘Sir’ Jadeja had been off-colour by not bowling or batting well in CSK’s earlier matches but has only been fielding well (except the back-to- back catches of Sunil Naraine he dropped in CSK’s latest loss) throughout this tournament. A key spinner in India’s ODI and T20 matches along with Test regular Ravichandran Ashwin, the duo has been replaced by the wrist-spinning duo of Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav for the past year or so. This might have had an effect on Jadeja’s performance, one thought.

Jadeja’s first ball rattled RCB and Indian captain Virat Kohli’s stumps. Neither Jadeja nor Kohli expected it to happen and instead of celebrating, Jadeja was cautious not to do so and only revealed a ‘shocking’ expression (for which he was trolled on Twitter by cricket-lovers for being ‘scared’ to celebrate Indian captain’s dismissal as it may put paid to his hopes of a ‘comeback’ in India’s ODI an T20 teams).

Harbhajan removed the dangerous de Villiers in the very next over, with MSD making a flash- like stumping to catch the ever-alert South African off-guard. Two wickets in two overs of RCB’s two best batsmen meant that CSK was back in the game. Make-shift opener Parthiv Patel slogged it out for a well-made 53 off 41 balls but once he got out in the 13 th over at 85, RCB lost three more wickets with a mere addition of 4 runs in the next couple of overs.

After it slumped to 89/8 in 15.1 overs, pacer Tim Southee used the long handle effectively to score 36 runs in the next five overs, thus giving some respectability to RCB’s final score of 127/9. CSK would have felt more than happy to get to score 130 to win off 120 balls. Opener Watson went early after which Raina and Rayudu added 44 runs for the second wicket in 4.4 overs. Raina, Rayudu and Dhruv Shorey departed in quick succession to trigger a middle-order batting collapse which left CSK needing 48 to win off 7.4 overs.

The undefeated fifth-wicket partnership of 48 between Dhoni and Bravo (sent ahead sensibly ahead of Jadeja) saw CSK through as it won in 18 overs. Dhoni hit 31 (not out) off 23 balls with a four three 6’s (all the sixes hit off Chahal in the 18 th over). Kohli later conceded that it was indeed a poor batting performance. He also had a word of praise for MSD’s six-hitting prowess and said that it augured very well for Indian cricket. Jadeja was adjudged the ‘Man of the
Match’ for his three wickets.

Brief scores: RCB 127/9 in 20 overs (Parthiv Patel 53, Tim Southee 36*, Jadeja 3-18, Harbhajan Singh 2-22) lost to CSK 128/4 in 18 overs (Rayudu 32, Raina 25, Dhoni 31*,Bravo 14*, Umesh Yadav 2-15)

Images Courtesy : BCCI - IPLT20