Suresh Raina

Suresh Raina’s well-paced 59, Albie Morkel’s quick fire 19 and disciplined death bowling ensured a win for the Chennai Super Kings over an ordinary Deccan Chargers on Sunday. Sunny Sohal’s brilliant 56 of 30 runs weren’t enough for the Deccan Chargers.

After winning the toss and electing to bat first Hussey gave Chennai a steady start on a slow track though he lost Vijay very early in the innings. Ojha’s arm-ball cramped Vijay who was on the pursuit of a cut-shot. He was dismissed for 3 (off 14 balls).

Suresh Raina who has had an ordinary IPL so far followed joined hands with Hussey. Riding on the confidence of his last match performance, he showed a lot of maturity in nudging the singles and mixing it with the big hits. He hit two sixes during the course of his 35 ball 59, both resulting out of a slog-sweep in his favorite mid-wicket region.

Harmeet Singh provided the much needed breakthrough in the 13th over when Hussey (46 off 41 balls) miscued a pull straight into the hands of deep square leg. He was followed by the skipper who kept rotating strike and in fact allowed Raina to take most of it.

Raina was dismissed in the 18th over when he tried to launch another over deep midwicket off Ojha and Dhawan ran a few steps and took a comfortable catch. Then came Albie Morkel’s important cameo when he struck the in-form Ishant Sharma for three consecutive sixes each one getting longer by distance. The last two were 109m and 114m respectively.

The chase by the Deccan showed up the over dependence on Sangakkara. Sunny Sohal ripped apart the Chennai bowling attack in the initial overs when he took majority of the strike in the powerplay overs and scored a 30-ball 56. He was well set to finish things of before getting out to Jakati playing an ordinary reverse sweep.

Sohal was the lone warrior for Deccan as he lost Dhawan for 19 (off 27 balls) early and his dismissal was followed by some ordinary batting display which allowed Chennai to dominate the game. White’s bad patch with the bat continued as he was unable to middle it to effect a trademark White innings.

Some controlled death bowling allowed the Chennai bowlers to get in the hang of things and effect a fantastic win. Albie Morkel’s cameo towards the end and his three wickets proved to be the difference between the two sides as the South African all-rounder was rightly adjudged man of the match.

Tags: Albie Morkel, Chennai Super Kings, Cricket, CSK, DC, Deccan Chargers, Indian Premier League, IPL, IPL 2011, IPL 4, Suresh Raina