Post Match Analysis: Mumbai Indians vs Chennai Super Kings

Pop the champagne boys, we’re off to a perfect start- one game, one win, a stylish Sachin Tendulkar fifty and an impeccable performance by the Indians against last year’s finalists. The Chennai squad were comprehensively outplayed by a fiery Mumbai Indians side.

Match Summary:

Toss: Chennai won the toss and elected to field.
Umpires: Billy Doctrove (West Indies) and K. Hariharan (India)
3rd Umpire: Russel Tiffin (Zimbabwe)

Mumbai Indians beat Chennai Super Kings by 19 Runs.

SCOREBOARD:

Mumbai Indians (There's a problem with the html code and so you'll have to scroll down quite a bit to see the scoreboard. Sorry for the inconvenience.)

Batsman	Wicket	Runs	Balls	4s	6s	S/R
Sanath Jayasuriya	c Hayden b Thushara	26	20	5	0	130.00
Sachin Tendulkar	Not Out	59	49	7	0	120.41
Shikhar Dhawan	Dhawan c MS Dhoni b Manpreet Gony	22	21	2	0	104.76
JP Duminy	c & b Manpreet Gony	9	7	1	0	128.57
Dwayne Bravo	c Matthew Hayden b Joginder Sharma	5	4	1	0	125.00
Abhishek Nayar	Nayar c Thilan Thushara b Jacob Oram	35	14	2	3	250.00
Harbhajan Singh	run out (Jacob Oram)	4	2	1	0	250.00
Zaheer Khan	c Ravichandran Ashwin b Andrew Flintoff	2	3	0	0	66.67
Pinal Shah	Not Out	0	0	0	0	0.00
Rohan Raje	-
Lasith Malinga	-

Extras (b 1, lb 1, w 1) 3
Total Score:166/7(20 Over)RR:8.3


Bowling:

Bowling	O	M	R	W	NB	WD	Eco
Manpreet Gony	4	0	32	2	0	1	8
Thilan Thushara	4	0	32	1	0	0	8
Andrew Flintoff	4	0	44	1	0	0	11
Jacob Oram	4	0	31	1	0	0	7.75
Joginder Sharma	4	0	25	1	0	0	6.25

Fall of wickets: 1-39 (Jayasuriya, 5.5 overs), 2-82 (Dhawan, 11.4), 3-95 (Duminy, 13.3), 4-102 (Bravo, 14.3), 5-148 (Nayar, 18.1), 6-157 (Harbhajan, 18.6), 7-161 (Khan, 19.5)

Highlights- Mumbai Indian Innings.

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Chennai Super Kings:

Batsman	Wicket	Runs	Balls	4s	6s	S/R
Parthiv Patel	c Tendulkar b Malinga	0	2	0	0	0.00
Matthew Hayden	c Khan b Jayasuriya	44	35	6	1	125.71
Suresh Raina	c Raje b Bravo	8	9	1	0	88.89
Andrew Flintoff	c & b Harbhajan	24	23	3	1	104.35
Mahendra Singh Dhoni	b Malinga	36	26	1	2	138.46
Jacob Oram	c Shah b Jayasuriya	8	6	0	1	133.33
S. Badrinath	c Bravo b Malinga	0	2	0	0	0.00
Joginder Sharma	not out	16	15	0	1	106.67
Thilan Thushara	not out	1	2	0	0	50.00
Manpreet Gony	-
Ravichandran Ashwin	-

Extras (lb 6, w 3) 9

Total Score: 146/7 (20 Overs) RR: 7.3


Bowling: (There's a problem with the html code and so you'll have to scroll down quite a bit to see the scoreboard. Sorry for the inconvenience.)

Bowling	O	M	R	W	NB	WD	Eco
Lasith Malinga	4	0	15	3	0	2	3.75
Zaheer Khan	4	0	34	0	0	0	8.5
Dwayne Bravo	4	0	27	1	0	1	6.75
Rohan Raje	1	0	15	0	0	0	15
Harbhajan Singh	3	0	15	1	0	0	5
Sanath Jayasuriya	4	0	34	2	0	0	8.5

Fall of wickets: 1-0 (Patel, 0.2 overs), 2-18 (Raina, 2.5), 3-70 (Flintoff, 9.5), 4-89 (Hayden, 12.4), 5-101 (Oram, 14.3), 6-109 (Badrinath, 15.3), 7-144 (Dhoni, 19.4)

Highlights- Chennai Super Kings Innings.

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The Game:

We were slightly worried at the outset when Chennai won the toss and elected to take the field. Looking at the cloudy sky above an already pace friendly wicket at Cape Town, meant the ball was going to be buzzing around leaving Sachin and Surya to counter unpredictable bounce and heavy seam movement.

Both players looked far from comfortable and before long Tendulkar edged one of Flintoff that looped slowly to Mathew Hayden at first slip. The Australian stalwart who retired from the International circuit recently grabbed at it and the shockingly the ball went down- everyone stood in disbelief, Hayden didn't know that he had just dropped the match.

But the breakthrough didn't take long to come thereafter.

In the very next over, Sanath Jayasuriya was dismissed for a 20 ball 26 by his Sri Lankan counterpart Thilan Thushara when he hit the ball hard to mid-wicket- this time around Hayden made no mistake.

Shikhar Dhawan walked in having realized that it was tough to get the ball away and adapted from the expansive strokes that are typical of cricket's shortest format to nudging the ball around the infield for singles. The 43-run stand came to an end when paceman Manpreet Gony got twin breakthroughs with Dhawan out caught behind and then hometown boy- Duminy fell in an unbelievable reflex catch of his own bowling. Bravo too did not last long.

The Indians were in a tight spot at 102-4 by the 15th over but adversity has always been exactly what brings Tendulkar to his sublime best. He'd steered the national squad to victory single handedly for years in the 90's but it had been a while since he had got a similar oppotunity. His form has been on the rise and he capitalized on that playing the sheet anchor role to perfection, alongside Nayar who took a liking to the bowling of Flintoff and walloped him for three sixes in the 18th over, scoring a brisk 35 of just 14 balls.

Together with his captain Tendulkar, Abhishek lifted the Mumbai Indians to a competitive total of 166. When the Super Kings came to bat, they found Sri Lankan fast bowler Lasith Malinga in superb form for the Mumbai Indians as his four overs cost just 15 runs, strangling the life out of MS Dhoni's team.

It was a remarkable recovery for Malinga, who only recently returned to cricket this February after almost a year out of the game with a knee injury. His knee was cured by a Dr Eliyantha White, a homeopathic doctor of sorts who, said Malinga at the time, “works with supernatural powers and herbs".

Not even a late change of his bat with three balls remaining could help Dhoni snatch an unlikely win for the Chennai Super Kings as he was bowled for 36 by Malinga in the final over. The Super Kings lost Parthiv Patel in the second ball of their innings for a duck as he edged Malinga to Tendulkar at slip. After Suresh Raina had gone cheaply for 8, Matthew Hayden and Andrew Flintoff steadied the Chennai Super Kings and put them on track to reach the Mumbai Indians score. But when Hayden and Flintoff fell in the 10th and 13th overs for 44 and 24 respectively, the Chennai Super Kings were always behind the asking rate and fell 19 runs short in the end.