A comfortable win for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) who have returned home and to winning ways. CSK trounced Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) by seven wickets, successfully chasing 138 with 14 balls to spare in front of the home crowd at MA Chidambaram Stadium. Ruturaj Gaikwad led CSK’s batting up from the front and played a captain’s knock of unbeaten 67. With just three runs needed for victory, the crowd got what they came in for with captain cool MS Dhoni walking out to the field. Dhoni took a couple of singles and left it to Gaikwad to hit the winning runs, who thrashed Anukul Roy through covers.

Earlier, CSK started well with Tushar Deshpande dismissing Phil Salt for a duck. But Sunil Narine and Angkrish Raghuvanshi batted well to score runs quickly, smashing fours and sixes. Both added 56 runs in 6 overs before Ravindra Jadeja came into the attack and removed Raghuvanshi (24). In the same over, the left-arm spinner bagged Narine (27) to give a double blow for KKR.

KKR captain Shreyas Iyer played a responsible innings, 32-ball 34 while other batters failed to read the conditions well and lost their wickets cheaply. Deshpande picked up the important wickets of Rinku Singh and Andre Russell in consecutive overs, applying a brake to KKR’s scoring rate. KKR finished 137/9 in 20 overs. Jadeja became the first player ever in the Indian T20 league to score at least 1000 runs, take 100 wickets, and take 100 catches as well.

CSK made a decent start with Rachin Ravindra and Gaikwad adding 27 runs for the opening wicket. Daryl Mitchell, who came up in the order, played a fine knock of 25. Once Mitchell fell, it was Shivam Dube’s show, the left-handed batter hammered Varun Chakravarthy for back-to-back sixes and then muscled Arora for another one over deep midwicket, making the chase easy for CSK.