Rohit Sharma and MS Dhoni at toss ahead during IPL 2019. (PTI)IPL 2020, CSK vs MI: Two teams that met in the Indian Premier League (IPL 2020) opener on September 19 are all set to face each other again in the 41st match of the season. A clear distinction has been witnessed in their performance so far. Mumbai Indians [MI full squad] are currently at number three after Delhi and RCB on the top two, while Dhoni’s men [CSK full squad] are at the bottom of the points tally. (CSK vs MI Live Score, Live Updates)
Mumbai are playing their first game after their twin Super Overs-thriller against Kings XI Punjab (KXIP). While CSK too are coming into this game on the back of a loss against Rajasthan Royals (RR). But unlike MI, they are currently on the eighth spot in the points table, having a win-loss ratio of 3-7.
So Rohit Sharma’s team will go to the middle with an aim of consolidating their position for the playoffs, Dhoni’s yellow army will be eager to keep their hopes of making it to the playoffs alive and will be keen to secure their second win against MI in the ongoing season.
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MSD: "Last game we played here the wicket played slightly better in the second innings, so not much of a problem. Once we landed here we had a 14-day break and before that we had a seven day-camp in Chennai and once we're here it became slightly difficult with the quarantine and there were a few phases where game went out of our hands and the batting wasn't also upto the mark, It happens in cricket and there are quite a few reasons for why we haven't been upto the mark. Three changes for us. Kedar Jadhav, Shane Watson, Piyush Chawla out and Jagadeesan, Gaikwad and Tahir are in."
Chennai Super Kings Playing XI: Sam Curran, Faf du Plessis, Ambati Rayudu, N Jagadeesan, MS Dhoni(w/c), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ravindra Jadeja, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur, Josh Hazlewood, Imran Tahir
Kieron Pllaord: "We are gonna bowl first. Don't expect the wicket to change much and hopefully there's some dew. We want to qualify to the playoffs first and we still have to come out and play good cricket. We have spoken about areas we need it improve and we want to execute them in the middle tonight. Rohit is struggling with his left hamstring and hopefully he will be fit soon and take the captaincy. Only change we have is Saurabh Tiwary comes in for Rohit."
Mumbai Indians Playing XI: Quinton de Kock(w), Saurabh Tiwary, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Hardik Pandya, Kieron Pollard(c), Krunal Pandya, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Rahul Chahar, Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah
Mumbai Indians win toss, opt to bowl first in Sharjah. Big news on the Mumbai front is that skipper Rohit Sharma misses out, Pollard comes in as stand-in captain.
Mumbai Indians Predicted Playing XI: Rohit Sharma, Quinton de Kock, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Kieron Pollard, Hardik Pandya, Krunal Pandya, Nathan Coulter-Nile/James Pattinson, Rahul Chahar, Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah
Chennai Super Kings Predicted Playing XI: Sam Curran, Faf du Plessis, Shane Watson/Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ambati Rayudu, Kedar Jadhav/N Jagadeesan, MS Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur, Piyush Chawla/Imran Tahir, Josh Hazlewood
Rohit Sharma's Mumbai Indians have played two matches here at Sharjah ground and have won one. On the other hand, CSK have played three games here and lost two.
Kapil Dev, the former India World Cup-winning captain, has undergone a coronary angioplasty surgery after he was admitted to Fortis Hospital in New Delhi late Thursday night due to chest pain. Kapil is still regarded as one of the finest all-rounders that the cricket world has produced. He led India to their first World Cup triumph in 1983. “Mr. Kapil Dev came to Fortis Escorts Heart Institute (Okhla Road) emergency department at 1:00 am on 23rd October with a complaint of chest pain. He was evaluated and an emergency coronary angioplasty was performed by Dr. Atul Mathur, Director of Cardiology Department, in the middle of the night,” said a Fortis Escorts statement. [Read More]
Kieron Pollard is currently scoring at a strike rate of 200 in this IPL season. The big-hitting West Indian all-rounder has scored 208 runs in 7 innings and coming into this game on the back of his 12-ball 34-run (not out) blitz against KXIP. He will be itching to send a few balls out of the park when MI face CSK in Sharjah.
The CSK vs MI rivalry is the oldest and fiercest rivalry in the history of IPL. MS Dhoni-led CSK are the most consistent franchise, qualifying for the playoffs in most of the seasons they have played and winning the trophy three times. On the other hand, MI were fairly consistent earlier but have become the most successful franchise in the T20 league in recent years, with title wins in 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019 under the leadership of Rohit Sharma. [Read More]
MS Dhoni looks a pale shadow of his past as a batsman in this Indian Premier League (IPL). So far the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) captain has scored 164 runs in 10 matches. Arguably the greatest finisher in the history of white-ball cricket is struggling to finish games. Is Dhoni’s hitting prowess on the wane? Statistics suggest so.
His career strike-rate in T20s, 135.54, is way above his strike-rate in this edition of the IPL, 125.19. In 326 T20s, he has hit a whopping 301 sixes. In 190 IPL matches between 2008 and 2019, Dhoni had hit 209 sixes, which means 1.1 sixes per game on average. The 2018 season was his brightest, six-hitting wise – 30 maximums in 16 games. Last year, he had hit 23 sixes in 15 matches. Compared to that, in 10 IPL matches this term, he has hit only six sixes. His six-hitting average this term has dropped 0.6 per game. [Read More]
Chennai Super Kings all-rounder Dwayne Bravo has been ruled out of the ongoing IPL with a groin injury, dealing a massive blow to the already struggling side which has very slim chances of advancing to the play-offs. The 37-year-old Bravo, an integral part of the CSK team for years now, couldn’t bowl the final over against Delhi Capitals in a match in Sharjah on October 17. Here's what the DJ has to say while leaving for his homeland:
All-rounder Vijay Shankar says he treated the match against Rajasthan Royals as a 'do-or-die game' as his good show with both bat and ball may have saved his place in Sunrisers Hyderabad's playing XI. Manish Pandey (83) and Shankar (52) stitched an unbroken 140-run partnership to help SRH chase down RR's 154 for six on Thursday.
The comfortable eight-wicket win lifted the team to the fifth spot in the eight-team competition with eight points from 10 games. "If you ask personally it was a do-or-die game for me. That's how I saw this game. I didn't have the best of time with the bat, so I had to perform in this game and fortunately or unfortunately, we lost early wickets which made the team to send me up the order," Shankar said at the post match press conference.
MS Dhoni requires 6 catches to complete 100 IPL catches for CSK.
Ambati Rayudu and Faf du Plessis need 2 and 1 fours respectively to complete 300 and 200 IPL fours.
Jasprit Bumrah is 3 wickets from completing 100 IPL wickets.
Kieron Pollard needs 37 runs to complete 3000 IPL runs.
Chennai Super Kings' Faf du Plessis has been in top five scorers so far with 375 runs to his name in the IPL but his performance could not bear fruits for the team. He has scored four fifties. The last CSK faced MI, Faf had scored an unbeaten half-century and the right-hander will be looking to have another fine outing with the bat against MI.
Another trusted name is Ravindra Jadeja who scored an unbeaten 35 in CSK’s game against RR and was his side’s leading run-getter. In the game before that, the left-hander had tonked 33* from 13 balls against Delhi Capitals in Sharjah. CSK will expect him to continue his batting form.
Hello and welcome to the live blog on the CSK vs MI match buildup. It's the 41st game of the season and both the teams are facing each other second time in the tournament today.
Their campaign turning from bad to worse, Chennai Super Kings are expected to try out a few of their younger players when they take on defending champions Mumbai today. Though skipper M S Dhoni conceded after the loss against Rajasthan Royals that the season might be already over them, CSK can still get to 14 points if they win their remaining four games, giving them an outside chance of making the play-offs.
As head coach Stephen Fleming pointed out, the ageing squad may have finally “run out of juice” after doing well over the past two seasons when they won in 2018 and reached the final the following year.