Day 7 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 featured a match of heavyweights Chennai Super Kings against the relatively young Delhi Capitals side.
Just one week into the IPL has produced another upset as Super Kings suffered a huge and embarrassing loss by 44 runs. Even though it’s pretty early days, it’s quite evident that the three-time champions are struggling to find some sort of rhythm.
CSK has been facing some troubles even before the tournament had started. The COVID-19 pandemic tailored the CSK camp as 13 of their staff including two players were tested positive. This unfortunate incident was followed by two of their veterans Suresh Raina and Harbhajan Singh withdrawing from the tournament.
Their opening match against MI went well as they comfortably won the match. However, in the next two matches, things seemed to have fallen out of place. Senior player Ambati Rayadu got injured as well which created another void in the already altered side. Speaking in the post-match conference, coach Stephen Fleming expressed concerns as well.
Coach Fleming admits that the side is struggling!
We just need to be a little bit clear with what we’re doing. And what perhaps we’re missing is a bigger contribution at the top so yeah there’s a lot of question marks and a lot of souls searching, in particular from the coaching point of view and the strategy point of view but we’re trying to find combinations where we get the best players at the right times and to keep shunting the order all over the place is not really our style but we’ve had a go at it and we’ll review how it’s gone.” admitted Fleming.
The pattern in their last two matches has been sort of similar. In their match against RR, pace bowler Lungi Ngidi and both the spinner Piyush Chawla and Ravindra Jadeja were brutally targeted. In yesterday’s match, they did make an adjustment of having Josh Hazlewood in place of Ngidi which worked. But spinners were still attacked.
As per batting is concerned, the openers have failed to contribute. The replacement Ruturaj Gaikwad has been struggling as well. Faf du Plessis has to handle both the top and middle order. Also, it has been noted that MS Dhoni comes to bat very late. The match has already slipped out of CSK’s hands when he comes to bat. They will have to make some changes and reiterate their plans.
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