Video of Faf du Plessis 76 in 55 balls in Today Match : CSK vs PBKS : IPL 2021

CSK vs PBKS, 07 October 2021, 03:30 PM IST

Match Report : CSK limped to 134. They did score many runs in the last four overs as Faf attacked the bowlers. But for most part, they looked out of order. The wicket was a little sticky and three wickets fell to well directed short balls.

Every batter apart from Faf struggled and it seemed they would be restricted to less than 120 at one point. But Faf got the big shots away and has helped his team to end on a good note. Not an easy track to bat on and Punjab know they will have to pull off a miracle in this chase.

Just to make a point if Punjab want to overtake KKR on the NRR front, they need to chase this down in 17 balls! That won’t happen. So, they would want to finish this off as soon as possible and then hope RR annihilates KKR. A chase of 135 as such won’t be easy. And CSK wouldn’t want three losses in a row before the playoffs. Momentum matters a lot in such tournaments.

Chris Jordan (2-20): “It’s very hot out there. The guys did a very good job to restrict CSK to 134. Everyone put every single bit of the energy into every ball and it really paid off. We have to complete the job now. We would have taken that (CSK’s 134) at the beginning of the innings having not seen any of the conditions. Everyone did a good job for the team.

We know their line-up is very dangerous, we’re pretty happy with what we have restricted them to. I felt in good rhythm, I have been training well so glad that I was able to put in a decent performance for the team today. The situation dictated that (bowling short at the CSK batters) for us to be nice and aggressive, take a few more risks and try to make inroads, luckily it paid off.”

MS Dhoni when asked if he’d be playing for CSK next year: “Well you can see me in yellow, but whether I’ll be playing for CSK there are a lot of uncertainties around it for a simple reason that we have two new teams coming up. We don’t know the retention policy.

We don’t know how many foreigners, Indian players we can retain, the money cap that every player will be cutting from the kitty. So there are a lot of uncertainties. Unless the rules are in place you can’t really decide that. So we will wait for it to happen and hopefully it will be good for everyone.”

Dwayne Bravo | Birthday boy: “The feeling is good, this is an important game for us. Everytime we play, every game against every opponent, it’s important. In a tournament like IPL, you are bound to lose a few games on the run.

Having said that, we are very proud with the way we go about in this campaign, especially in the second leg. This game is another important game, we want to challenge ourselves as a team to make sure we bounce back from the last game and go into the knockouts with a win under our belt.”