The EL-CLASSICO of Tata IPL 2022, The heavy weights of IPL went head to head in the 33rd Match of IPL 2022. The five times IPL Champions Mumbai Indians vs the Chennai Super Kings lock horns at the DY. Patil Sports Academy. In head to head competitions Mumbai has delivered the knockout punch in 19 occasions, including three victories in finals. Whereas CSK could only defeat MI 13 times inclusive of only one victory in the finals at the same venue in 2010.
The story is a bit different in 2022, where both the teams are rather fighting at the bottom of the table than the top of the table. After winning the toss, CSK skipper Jadeja opted to field first. Chennai went onto this match with 2 changes, as both the English recruits Moeen and Jordan were replaced by Pretorius and Santner. On the other-hand from the blue corner, we saw total 3 changes, Daniel Sams came back into the squad and two debut caps were handed to Riley Meredith and Hritik Shoukeen, the 19-year-old allrounder.
Brief match info –
After electing to bowl first, even Jadeja wouldn’t have expected such a terrific start from tall left arm seamer, Mukesh Choudhary, who dismissed both the Mumbai openers within the first over of the match. Mukesh gave the best possible start to Chennai by tormenting Mumbai to 23-3 after three overs. Surya played few typical SKY-like shots to shift the momentum in Mumbai’s favor but was dismissed soon after a missed stumping from the great MSD. Two 19-year old amateurs, played a very mature innings, stitching together a 37-run stand for the fifth wicket, Hrithik Shokeen and Tilak Varma took Mumbai to 84-4 before from 47-4. MI added few quick runs owing to some sloppy fielding and a total of 5 drop catches from CSK with some sensible batting from Tilak Varma helping Mumbai Indians with a 150 plus score. In the last 10 overs, total 99 runs were scored.
If Chennai can pick wicket in the second ball of the innings, Mumbai can take a wicket in the first ball rather. Mumbai had the best possible start to this defense by dismissing Ruturaj on the very first ball. Santner who was sent ahead of Rayudu was also dismissed soon after playing few handsome looking shots. The veterans, Rayudu and Uthappa tried to rebuilt the innings but Daniel Sams was the road-blocker picking wickets at regular intervals for MI and brining them back in the game. With 17 needed off the final six, the coolest man on this planet, MSD, just did what he does best, finished it off in style on the last ball of the innings to win it for Chennai Super kings to take them to four points.
Top 3 Performances –
Mukesh swings the Mumbai batters back to pavilion
Mukesh Choudhary probably had banana’s and eggs for breakfast going into this match, as he was swinging the ball bananas from the very first ball, dismissing both the Mumbai opener for ducks in his first over. On the very first ball of the innings, Mukesh bowled a perfect in-swinging yorker which troubled Rohit. It’s a world known fact now that, Rohit Sharma early in his innings, is weak against the in-swinging deliveries onto the pads from left handers. Mukesh didn’t had to do much as he just followed the plan and bowled an in swinger into Rohit’s pad. What followed was a soft dismissal, as the Mumbai captain, played a nothing shot gifting his wicket for a duck on the second ball of the innings. Mukesh utilizing the swing offered by the new ball, clean bowled the million-dollar Ishan Kishan with an absolute peach of a delivery. The ball was full and swinging away from Kishan, who probably missed the line of the ball, got squared up and ended up losing his balance falling onto the knees to that 139.9kmps outswining Yorker.
Mukesh wasn’t done yet, he then dismissed baby AB, Deward brevis. Choudhary saw Dewald walking down and banged it short wide and angling across the right hander. Brewis just threw his hands at his edging it to the ever so safe, MS Dhoni who completed the formalities with the gloves. Mukesh was denied a four-fer, where DJ Bravo dropped a sitter in the slips off Tilak Verma who then went onto score a crucial fifty for Mumbai. Choudhary utilized the new ball to the fullest picking three wickets in two back to back overs and made the Mumbai batters dance to his swing tune inside the powerplay. Mukesh ended with figures of three for 19 in his three overs at an economy of just 6.30.
Daniel “Summons” Chennai with a four-fer
Sams who had been leaking runs at an economy of 12.63 per over before this match was making a comeback after being dropped for two matches. The tall Australian all-rounder picked a wicket on the very first ball of the innings and his spell to set the tone for Mumbai’s defense. The tall left arm seamer then dismissed santner with a short ball which just climbed onto santner who ended up top edging it to Jaydev unadkat.
Whenever Chennai built a partnership, Rohit brought on Sams and he broke the shackles with wickets! Daniel setup up dube with a bouncer pushing the left hander on the backfoot then followed up with a brilliant good length ball to pick Shivam Dube’s thick outside edge. The allrounder was brought on again in the 15th over in search of a wicket and did just what the doctor ordered, dismissed the well settled Ambati Rayudu who sliced a full toss to a diving pollard at long on. Daniel picked a wicket in every over that he bowled in this match taking up four crucial timed and big wickets, giving just 30 runs in his quota of four overs.
For the Kazillionth’ time, Dhoni finishes off in style!
There hasn’t been a better finisher of the game than Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and today for the umpteenth time he proved why! At the start of the 19th over, needing 28 off 12 balls, even if 1% of the supporters believed in CSK, it was because of the presence of the greatest finisher ever, MSD. Preterious and Dhoni sensibly played out the 19th over of the Yorker king Jasprit Bumrah without taking much risk or rather without losing any wicket knowing that Jaydev undkat would be bowling the last over. With 17 runs needed off the final six, Mumbai were still favorites to win the game. Unadkat struck pretorious right in front of the stumps for a plump LBW which was wrongly judged by the umpire and the decision was over turned off a successful review from Mumbai, a wicket on the very first ball of the last over swung the weights further in Mumbai’s favor.
Needing 17 off 5, Bravo, who was on strike, did what was the need of the hour, took a single and brought the ICE COOL, Dhoni, on strike. Dhoni who always have had the upper hand over Jaydev, had scored 83 runs of 36 balls before this match, with a strike rate of 236.24 with the latter dismissing MSD only once. Needing 16 off four balls, Bowling from over the wicket angling across the right hander, Unadkat bowled right in the slot for Dhoni to bring those fast bottom hand into the game and smashed a flat six which went into the straight sightscreen like a tracer bullet. With 10 needed off three, Unadkat erred again by bowling a slower bouncer, Dhoni hooked it with a slight top edge towards the fine leg boundary. Still CSK needed six runs off two deliveries, Unadkat followed with a brilliant Yorker at leg stump. Dhoni smartly whipped the ball towards deep-midwicket and ran like a horse for two runs.
What followed was not a surprise to the fellow MSDians who have seen this happen for the past 18 years. Four needed off one ball, with heart rate of spectators & Unadkat pumping more than MSD’s strike rate, but the great man standing at the striker’s end, was as cool as the protoplanetary Boomerang Nebula (The coldest object in the universe). Unadkat bowled a low full toss on MSD’s legs, since fine leg was up, dhoni shuffled across and chopped it fine for a boundary behind deep square leg, adding another chapter to his long book of last-over finishes. Dhoni also has the most runs in the 20th over batting second in the IPL history, having scoring 250 runs at an average of 35.71 with a staggering strike rate of 287.35 which includes 23 mammoth sixes which has many matches for CSK just like today’s.