CSK to try to retain its dominance over DD during penultimate league clash

Chennai Super Kings (CSK) would be playing their 13th match – which would also be their penultimate match during the league stage – when they take on Delhi Daredevils (DD) at Delhi’s Feroze Shah Kotla Stadium tonight in the on-going Indian Premier League (IPL) T20 tourney.

DD has the dubious distinction of becoming the ‘first time’ to be knocked out of the competition and would now be playing its last two games merely for pride. Except for wicket-keeper-batsman Rishabh Pant, who has been having an outstanding tournament, none of Delhi’s much-vaunted battling line-up fired in the earlier matches.

Despite its loss to Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) yesterday in a high-scoring match at Bangalore, Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) still tops the points table with 18 points followed by CSK with 16 points. Literally speaking, all the other five teams in the fray – Kolkata Knight Riders, Mumbai Indians, RCB, Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab – have a mathematical probability of still making it to the play-off to seal the last two spots. Top four teams qualify to play in the play-off stage.

CSK and DD have two more matches to play, whereas all the other six teams have only one match to play to complete their respective quota of 14 matches (7 home matches and 7 away matches against each of the opponents). CSK’s net-run-rate, though, is far better than that of SRH and MI betters CSK marginally on this count.

DD’s disappointing campaign is just two matches away from coming to an end and the team would no doubt like to go away with its head held high. However, it would be an uphill task for DD to put it across CSK and MI in order to turn the tables in its favour in its last two matches. CSK, on the other hand, would try to win against DD as well as Kings XI Punjab to finish on top of the table, even as it would certainly hope that SRH loses its last league match against KKR.

In head-to-head clashes in IPL matches, CSK clearly has the edge by winning 12 out of their 17 matches so far. Even at Kotla, CSK has won 4 out of the 5 matches against DD and would certainly hope to keep up its dominance. While CSK may not tamper with the winning combination, DD might try to get more youngsters like Abhishek Sharma playing in the last two matches as it has nothing to lose.

Players to watch out for:

CSK: Watson, Rayudu, Dhoni, Deepak Chahar, Raina
DD: Prithvi Shah, Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer, Trent Boult