IPL T20 2020 1st Match Report - CSK vs MI

Tags: Indian T20 League 2020, Mumbai XI vs Chennai XI, 1st Match at Abu Dhabi, Sep 19, 2020, Chennai XI, Mumbai XI

Published on: Sep 19, 2020

Scorecard | Commentary | Graphs

So IPL finally kicked off and we had a competitive match to watch. CSK looked on course to win for most of the match, except for a bit of a wobble in the second half of their chase. A calm Faf du Plessis batted through to get his team off to a winning start.

Chennai, who were chasing 163 to register first points in the tournament, were rocked early by the pace of MI bowlers. Boult and Pattinson, both making their debut for MI, got rid of Watson and Vijay respectively in their first overs to leave CSK reeling at 6-2. Rayudu and Faf du Plessis then steadied the ship with some careful batting. Faf, in particular, followed a cautious approach while Rayudu took the role of aggressor with a boundary every now and then. Just when it seemed CSK would ride home easily, Rayudu fell to a great caught and bowled by Rahul Chahar, not before he had compiled a match winning 71. Jadeja and Curran came in to bat ahead of MSD, and scored some useful boundaries, but both got out. Finally MS did come to bat, but Faf only performed the final rites while also helping himself to a half century. Both the sides looked pretty rusty in the field, especially Mumbai, given most of the players were playing after a gap of nearly six months.

Earlier in the match, Rohit and de Kock got Mumbai off to a good start. QDK cracked a quickfire 33 off 20 balls before falling to Sam Curran. A not-so-fit looking Saurabh Tiwary, who came in at number four, struggled initially to get going but picked up his scoring rate later on. Alongside him, Hardik Pandya was just starting to wreak havoc with consecutive sixes of Jadeja, before the latter picked up both him and Tiwary within an over, courtesy some fantastic work at the boundary by Faf du Plessis. After that, it was CSK all the way as the new Mumbai batsmen who had just come to the crease struggled to find the fence regularly. Ngidi, who had a forgettable start to the match, came back well to rattle the MI lower middle order with wickets of Pollard, Krunal Pandya and James Pattinson. Piyush Chawla, who picked up the wicket of Rohit Sharma, overtook his CSK teammate Harbhajan Singh to become the third highest wicket taker in IPL history.

Jatin Shad

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