Sunrisers Hyderabad 181 for 5 (Kishan 70, Klaasen 47, Choudhary 2-36) beat Chennai Super Kings 180 for 7 (Brevis 44, Cummins 3-28, Sakib 2-34) by five wickets

Gaikwad in focus again

It doesn’t appear as if Gaikwad is out of form. He is CSK’s second-highest run-getter. Just that he seems to be in denial about the way runs are scored in the powerplay in this IPL. With the field up, other openers are thinking boundaries all the time. He wants to get set and then go. It’s old school and that method, on Monday, gave him 15 in 21 balls – the lowest contribution by an opener at the time of his team’s 100.

Cummins brings up 200 T20 wickets

Brevis comes good

Dewald Brevis walking out to bat is a spectacle all on its own, when he takes a knee just before entering the field. It’s clearly got something to do with his faith, but out here, it’s seen as a hero entry. As the main man marking himself out as the main man. Except coming into this game, he had a strike rate of 122.22. It was the sixth-lowest of all batters this season to have faced at least 50 balls.

SRH allowed only two boundaries in the five overs from nine to 13. CSK needed something from their star boy and finally he delivered. Hitting Nitish Reddy for a four and a six in the 14th over set him on his way to make 44 off 27. Confident in his cross-bat shots, he set himself up for the slow short ball and kept cutting and pulling them into the boundary.

At 17.5 overs, when Brevis was dismissed by Eshan Malinga, he, Samson and Kartik had scored 103 off 59, with 10 fours and seven sixes. Gaikwad, Urvil Patel and Shivam Dube had scored 54 off 52 with three fours and three sixes.

CSK and SRH push each other

A third of CSK’s first seven overs were dot balls. Forty of SRH’s first 53 runs came in boundaries. The start of the chase was all about two teams pushing each other waiting for one of them to break. Spencer Johnson and Mukesh Choudhary pushed the speed gun up to 140 kph and above, the polar opposite of what SRH’s quicks did, but they kept Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma in check and eventually got one of them out.

Akeal vs Abhishek

In between innings, CSK coach Stephen Fleming was deep in conversation with Akeal Hosein. A little bit of lip-reading suggested they were talking about how a left-arm spinner could succeed against left-hand batters. Hosein seemed to say he wanted to take the ball away from Abhishek and Head and Kishan first, and then bring one back to hit the stumps. It didn’t quite work out that way but he did get rid of Abhishek two balls into the match-up to lift CSK’s hopes.

Klaasen kills it

A straight-bat push nearly resulted in his wicket but the ball dropped short of Hosein. Klaasen responded to that with a reverse sweep for four. Noor saw the change in stance and pulled out at the start of his next over. The next ball, Klaasen could have been dismissed for 18, had Johnson held on to a tough catch at deep square leg. Once again, shrugging away the near-miss, Klaasen clattered Noor to the boundary. Klaasen dominated spin and finished with 47 off 26. He had a strike rate of 181 and was in control of 81% of the balls he faced. Those numbers should not have been possible on a pitch that was slow and a bit low. The impact he had on the game was apparent when Samson and Urvil had send-offs for Klaasen.

Kishan’s guiding hand

Batting in Klaasen’s slipstream was fun for Kishan. He brought up fifty off 37 balls. It wasn’t a fluent innings and that almost made it more special. He was so determined not to give it away and so alert when the bad ball came. Any time he had the chance to use his fast hands and whip stuff off his pads, he took them. He played the kind of innings that is important in the context of a season; a performance that says he may not be at his best but is still a threat.