When Mahendra Singh Dhoni said that “there are too many holes in the ship” after the Chennai Super Kings’ 37-run defeat to Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) on Saturday, he indeed resembled a helpless captain of a doomed vessel.
That was in stark contrast to a beaming Virat Kohli, who basked in the glory of a “complete performance” from his team.
Kohli led from the front with a classy, unbeaten 90 off 52 balls, while South Africa all-rounder Chris Morris (3/19) starred with the ball in his first IPL 2020 appearance as RCB recorded another win to be placed fourth in the standings with eight points.
The Super Kings are sixth with five defeats from seven games.
Thanks to Kohli, RCB notched up as many as 66 off the last four overs of their innings to post a challenging total of 169/4 after winning the toss. When RCB looked set for a below-par total, Kohli upped the tempo with some big-but-clean hits to boost his team.
The pitch did slow down a bit in the second half of the game, but the Super Kings once again messed up their chase being over-cautious in their batting.
After their openers, Shane Watson and Faf du Plessis, departed early, Dhoni’s team failed to score at the required rate and in the end had too much to do.
Also, the Super Kings repeated the mistake of sending their best hitters — Ravindra Jadeja, Sam Curran and Dwayne Bravo — too late when the required rate had almost gone beyond reach.