In a perfect all-round display of its batting and bowling might, the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) defeated Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) in its last league match of the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) T20 cricket tournament on Sunday night, thus eliminating the latter’s chances of qualifying for the play-off stages. CSK is to meet SRH tomorrow (on Tuesday).

Earlier in the day, 3-time champions Mumbai Indians (MI) were also knocked out of this year’s edition of the tournament when they couldn’t win the must-win encounter against the Delhi Daredevils (DD) at Delhi’s Feroze Shah Kotla Stadium in the evening encounter. Set a moderate 175 by DD to win the all-important encounter, MI stuttered against the leg-spinning duo of Amit Mishra and Nepal’s Sandeep Lamichane (who took 6 wickets among themselves) to lose the match by 11 runs and exit the IPL.

After CSK inserted KXIP to bat and Ngidi took out Chris Gayle in the second over, the ‘swinging’ seamer Deepak Chahar (he later proved his mettle with the bat too) bowled a perfect deliver to get Aussie Finch knick an out-swinger to first slip to Raina. What followed in the fourth over was unbelievable. Lungi Ngidi bowled probably the ‘best ball of the tournament’ when he got an in-form K.L. Rahul to leave a seemingly away-going delivery which came back to uproot Rahul’s off-stump.

Except for the fourth wicket partnership of Manoj Tiwary and David Miller (who was bowled off a beauty of an yorker from Bravo), no partnership flourished for KXIP which only made a below-par 153 and needed to bowl out or restrict CSK to below 100 to give itself a chance to qualify for the play-offs. It seemed on course to doing so when it reduced CSK to 27/3 in the fifth-over when Bhajji (Harbhajan) was sent as a pinch-hitter and managed a run-a-ball 19 even as Raina was holding up one end albeit in an uncharacteristic innings as the number of balls faced outscored the runs he had scored.

After Bhajji’s exit and when the team needed 10 runs per over off the last 10 overs, Dhoni’s ‘thinking mind’ (which is read by very few) sent Deepak Chahar in place of himself or Jadeja or Bravo. In the hindsight, it turned out to be a very important decision as it not only made KXIP’s bowlers lose their plot, but also brought to the fore the striking/all-round capabilities of Chahar, who hardly got to bad all these days. Chahar's 20-ball 39 including one four and three sixes gave just the requisite momentum to CSK after which Dhoni and Raina completed the formalities.

It was still not so easy when Dhoni walked in as 40 were needed off 3.5 overs. Raina came into his own in the 19th over, hitting Tye all around the park as he scored 6-2-6-4-4-0, making it a no contest in just an over. After plundering 22 runs in five balls, Raina defended the last ball, leaving ‘captain cool’ Dhoni to do the honours of hitting the winning runs. Dhoni didn’t take much time as he smote the first ball of the 20th over (bowled by Mohit Sharma) to the crowds at the long leg fence, thus finishing things in his typical style! Ngidi was adjudged the ‘Man of the Match’ for his 4/10.

Brief scores:

KXIP: 153 all out in 20 overs (Tiwary 35, Miller 24, Karun Nair 45, Ngidi 4/10, Thakur 2-33) lost to CSK 159/5 in 19.1 overs (Raina 61*, Harbhajan 19, Chahar 39, Dhoni 16*)