The defending champions, Chennai Super Kings (CSK), after the loss against Mumbai Indians (MI) in the first Qualifier, will now have to put extra efforts to make it to the IPL 2019 final.
On Tuesday, they lost the crucial encounter by 6 wickets after enormously talented Suryakumar Yadav played one of his finest knocks on a challenging Chepauk wicket.
The result would have been different had Murali Vijay helped CSK bowler Deepak Chahar dismiss Suryakumar in the fifth over of the MI run-chase.
Suryakumar was batting on 11, when he gave CSK a chance to get him out by a mistimed cross hit which found Vijay, who was standing at mid-on. The fielder dived onto his right, but couldn’t take the catch.
To add insult to injury, the ball ran away to the boundary for a four. The poor effort made Dhoni shout at Vijay.
The missed-chance definitely cost the Yellow army as Suryakumar remained unbeaten on 71 from 54 balls with 10 fours and saw his team through to a six-wicket victory. The knock helped MI chase down the target with nine balls to spare.
Dhoni had a word of caution now that CSK has lost four out of their last six games but are still in the hunt having finished in the top two.
“It isn’t good to lose games at such times, but it is good that we finished in the top-two, rather then going over the wicket, we now need to go round the wicket, that means the journey takes a longer time. But luckily, we finished in the top two and that gives us a second chance,” he said during the post-match presentation.
