Chennai Super Kings in command against Kings XI Punjab: First innings report
Chennai Super Kings have piled up a massive total of 188 for 4 against Kings XI Punjab in the first innings of the ninth Indian Premier League game at the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium in Mohali.
After losing a couple of early wickets, the Chennai Kings came back extremely hard, and the brutal batting shows from http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mahendra-Singh-Dhoni-c73820 put the Super Kings in commanding position in the match.
Earlier in the day, the Kings XI Punjab captain http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Adam-Gilchrist-c918 won the toss and elected to field first, hoping to get some help from the seaming track.
The crowd got thrilled when http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Praveen-Kumar-c82600 trapped the Chennai opener Srikkanth Anirudha in front of his wickets with a lovely in-swinger off the very first ball of the game. The umpire raised his finger and that forced India’s World Cup winning team
member Suresh Raina to walk to the middle. The excitement reached its maximum as Praveen picked up yet another wicket off the very next ball. Raina scooped the ball straight into the hands of the fielder at mid-wicket position.
The defending champions were two down without a run and it looked as if Praveen wanted to finish the affair quickly. After surviving the hat-trick ball nervously, Subramaniam Badrinath, along with his partner Murali Vijay took the responsibility for
the Chennai team and laid the foundation for a big score.
Vijay and Badrinath played beautifully and put together a classy partnership of 124 runs, which eventually gave a supporting hand to Chennai's sinking boat.
Adam Gilchrist used all of his bowling options but none of the Punjab bowlers after Praveen could give a tough time to the Chennai batting line-up.
After a long struggle, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Piyush-c82317 Chawla finally provided the breakthrough for Kings XI Punjab, when Vijay was stumped by Gilchrist while trying to hit a big shot. Vijay lost his wicket after scoring a fantastic 43-ball 72 at a strike rate of 172.
The fall of Vijay brought http://www.senore.com/Cricket/MS-Dhoni-c2028 at the crease, who did not take much time to settle down. Dhoni hit some massive strokes in his blistering innings of 43 runs off just 20 balls. After hitting 4 boundaries and a couple of mighty sixes, Dhoni was bowled
out by Ryan Harris in the last over of the innings.
Badrinath’s unbeaten 66 off 56 balls proved to be the backbone of Chennai’s innings, as he batted throughout the innings with a steady approach.
In Kings XI bowling, Praveen Kumar got a couple of wickets after conceding 37 runs in his 4 overs. Harris bowled magnificently, returning with fantastic figures of 1 for 25. Chawla also managed to get a wicket, however, he gave away 33 runs from his
3 overs.
The Adam Gilchrist-led Kings XI http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Punjab-c833 now need 189 runs to win at almost 9.50 runs per over.
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