Video of longest six in IPL: MS Dhoni’s six against Umesh Yadav

Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bangalore , April 21 2019, 8:00 PM IST

Mahendra Singh Dhoni was on strike, Umesh Yadav had the ball, Virat Kohli was fielding near the boundary ropes. Chennai Super Kings needed 26 runs off the final over and yet, the crowd at Chinnaswamy stadium was not breathing easy.

Umesh ran up and bowled a back of a length delivery, Dhoni shoveled it away over short square leg and collected a boundary. The crowd was now watching restlessly, Umesh ran up again, this time bowled a length ball, Dhoni was on the backfoot and smoked it, up and over deep mid-wicket, the ball kept flying and cleared the roof. Ball tracking revealed that the six was 111 metres long, and this was the longest six this season.

Three sixes and one four later, Dhoni missed the final ball as Parthiv Patel collected the ball and threw down the stumps to find Shardul Thakur short. RCB scraped home by 1 run to keep themselves alive and kicking in the campaign.

“I think more the reason was that Dhoni felt he was best equipped to hit those sixes. The way he calculates the last few overs based on his power, he would have looked at it saying ‘I need four-five sixes to win the game’. As it panned out it was pretty close. He’s so calculative, I would never question the last part of an innings with MS,” coach Stephen Fleming said in the post-match press conference.

Records created in this match

First time CSK have lost two consecutive matches since coming back in IPL 2018

Ends a streak of seven successive wins for CSK against RCB

Highest score for Dhoni in T20 cricket (84)*

What the captains said

MS Dhoni | Losing Skipper:  “I think it was a good game. We did really well to restrict them to a below par total, but we needed some good batting at the top. Once you know the opposition attack, you gotta stick to your plans and if you lose too many wickets upfront that puts pressure and the middle order really can’t go after the bowlers from the start.

We have to carefully see what are the areas we want to take that risk. It was still difficult at the end. It was slightly spungy (the pitch) and the new batsmen found it difficult. Boundaries were needed and yes we have lost by one run but at the same time we have to see what if there were few dot balls and whether we could have got those extra boundaries or not.”

Virat Kohli | Winning Skipper: “A whole lot of emotion. We were outstanding with the ball until the 19th over mark. Defending 160 on that sort of pitch and the amount of dew we had was an outstanding effort. On the last ball, that was the last thing I would’ve expected to happen. Feels good to win a game by a small margin. We’ve lost a couple by small margins. MS did what he does best and he gave us all a massive scare.

In the first six overs, we thought the ball wasn’t coming onto the bat that much. PP and AB started to rebuild. At the halfway mark we thought 175 would’ve been a very good total on this pitch. We thought we were 15 short. We thought their bowlers didn’t make us play enough on the front foot. And if we pitch the ball in the right areas enough, we’ll get wickets in the powerplay which proved to be the case.”