The defending champions of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 tournament Chennai Super Kings (CSK) on Sunday night suffered their third consecutive defeat in the 15th edition of the T20 cricket tournament, losing the contest to Punjab Kings (PBKS) by a huge margin of 54 runs at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai on Sunday night.
Punjab Kings, who were asked to bat first as Chennai Super Kings won the toss, finished at a strong total of 180/8 in their 20 overs with England all-rounder Liam Livingstone hammering five sixes and five boundaries to score 60 from 32 balls as his innings threatened to take his team’s total past 200-run mark at one stage.
The senior batsmen for Punjab Kings, Shikhar Dhawan contributed with a crucial 33 whereas Jitesh Sharma, playing his first match in the tournament, made a fluent 17-ball 26 which included three sixes.
Even though Punjab Kings lost early wickets in the form of Mayank Agarwal (4) and Banka Rajapaksa (9), they did not get bogged down and continued to attack the Chennai bowlers. The Punjab Kings were cruising at one stage but a flurry of wickets late in the innings put them from getting anything beyond 180/8 in their 20 overs.
For Chennai Super Kings, Chris Jordan was impressive as he took 4-0-23-2 while all-rounder Dwaine Pretorius took 2/30 from his four overs. Among other bowlers, Mukesh Chaudhary, Dwayne Bravo and Ravindra Jadeja took one wicket each.
In their reply, Chennai Super Kings lost Ruturaj Gaikwad for 1 and Moeen Ali for a two-ball duck as they made a poor start to the chase. The troubles continued for the defending champions for whom Robin Uthappa could manage only 13 from 10 balls while Ambati Rayudu made as many runs from 21 balls with the help of two boundaries.
Chennai were reduced to 36/5 in 7.3 overs but a half-century from their all-rounder Shivam Dube held them together in the middle overs. Dube scored 57 from 30 balls with six boundaries and three sixes, while adding 62 runs for the sixth wicket with former captain MS Dhoni.
Dhoni played an uncharacteristic knock of 23 from 28 balls with just one boundary and a six but Chennai could never really recover from loss of wickets in heaps, something that was also witnessed towards the end of the innings.
CSK were bowled out for just 126 from 18 overs with Rahul Chahar impressing once again, returning with 4-0-25-3 whereas Vaibhav Arora and Liam Livingstone both claimed two wickets each. The other bowlers in Kagiso Rabada, Arshdeep Singh and Odean Smith took one wicket apiece.