It was a low-scoring thriller on Sunday evening between the Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders at the Chepauk Stadium in the 61st game of the season. Interestingly, CSK suffered a rare defeat on home soil against KKR. This was the first win for KKR since 2012 at Chepauk Stadium.
KKR won the game with six wickets and nine balls to spare. With this win, Kolkata has still kept their hopes alive of making it to the playoffs. On the other hand, this loss has certainly dented CSK’s hope to finish the group on top or even qualify.
That’s what former Indian test opener Aakash Chopra feels. He believes that there are chances that CSK might not qualify either after the loss on Sunday. In a video shared on his YouTube channel, Aakash spoke about the game and pointed out mistakes made by the home team.
He said, “Chennai have not yet qualified and they might not even qualify, that is also a possibility. They are finding themselves on a slightly slippery slope. They were seen struggling right from the start. You were restricted to a small total despite Shivam Dube’s very good knock.”
Well, it didn’t go as expected for MS Dhoni and his men, as he said at the post-match presentation that it was a mistake to choose to bat first, and some bad shots from the batters didn’t help either. He also said that it was a 175-run pitch, which would be a par score.
Batting first, CSK were restricted to only 144/6 in the first inning. Shivam Dube looked good for his unbeaten 48 off 34. But none of the other batters got going. Varun Chakaravarthy and Sunil Narine picked up two wickets each. In reply, Nitish Rana (57* off 44) and Rinku Singh (54 off 43) made half-centuries to help KKR win by six wickets.
