Punjab Kings pulled off a thrilling chase of 201 against Chennai Super Kings and registered their fifth win of IPL 2023 on Sunday. The Shikhar Dhawan led side defeated CSK by 4 wickets at Chepauk.
Asked to bowl first, the men in red scored 200/4 in 20 overs, courtesy of the unbeaten 92-run knock from Devon Conway and his 86-run opening wicket stand with Ruturaj Gaikwad (37) helped Chennai Super Kings give a perfect start. Dhoni promoted Shivam Dube to number three and he added 44 runs for the second wicket alongside Conway. Once Dube departed, CSK sent two more left-handers to bat but they couldn’t do well. Moeen Ali and Ravindra Jadeja failed to deliver and Conway too, slowed down after flying past his fifty. The struggles were shoveled out of their way after Zimbabwe allrounder Sikandar Raza played an audacious chip shot over the head of square leg to get three runs of the last ball.
In the 9th over of PBKS’ chase, Prabhsimran completely failed to judge Ravindra Jadeja’s delivery as he went way out of the crease. Dhoni, who was standing behind the stumps, got the ball and comfortably stumped him out. But before dislodging the bails, the CSK skipper teased Prabhsimran a bit and before disturbing the stumps, sending him packing for a score of 42.
This was the biggest chase ever against CSK at Chepauk and with both teams on 10 points, the race for top-4 has suddenly turned topsy-turvy.
Earlier in the day, at the 1000th match in the history of the Indian Premier League (IPL), Mumbai Indians chased down a gigantic target of 213 runs against Rajasthan Royals to keep themselves in the hunt for a spot in the playoffs. The victory was MI’s 4th from 8 matches while RR squandered the opportunity to regain the top spot in the points table with the defeat. It was Yashasvi Jaiswal who scored his maiden IPL ton to set the perfect stage for the Royals but Tim David and Suryakumar Yadav’s heroics at the end enable MI to take two points from the game.
With recent matches, a total of 4 teams have 10 points each to their name, with Lucknow Super Giants, Rajasthan Royals, Chennai Super Kings and Punjab Kings occupying the next four spots.
Guajrat Titans remained on top with 12 points to their name.
While the lowest spot was taken by Delhi Capitals with just 2 wins in 8 matches.