It’s been a while since we saw Chennai Super Kings play Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League. 3 years, in fact. The last time they played, Shane Watson was a Rajasthan Royals player, the fulcrum of their side.
Indeed, the last time they played, the game was played in the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. But this time it will be played in Pune, because of non-cricketing reasons which we don’t want to go into here.
But never mind, here we are and what an exciting game to look forward to. To begin with, we have a new Ajinkya Rahane, who is playing more aggressively than he has ever done in his excellent cricketing career. Rahane seems to have realized the importance of scoring quickly in T20 cricket and has smade 72 runs off the last 39 balls he has faced in this IPL 2018. Not bad!
The fact is, the old way of cricket will not work anymore. Players have to adapt to changing times. Test cricket, as we know it, won’t last for too long. Nobody really has the patience to watch a cricket match for 5 days in this day and age.
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It’s good that Rahane, a technically gifted player, has realized that and adapted to the changing circumstances. One hopes that the equally talented Cheteshwar Pujara learns something as well.
CSK are a very good team and they have batted spectacularly especially in the late stages. They have a run rate of 13.22 in the death overs. But their bowling has been quite poor. They have conceded an average of 188 runs in every game played so far which is not what you would expect from such a top, top side.
For this reason, we expect them to play the English seamer David Willey in tonight’s game. Willey was brought in as a replacement for Kedhar Jadhav who was injured. He is a very good fast medium bowler who cat bat a bit.
MS Dhoni batted with a back injury in the last game, he seems to have recovered from it and will play this game. Suresh Raina could feature in this game as well.
For the Royals, there is a question mark over the fitness of Jofra Archer. He is a talented young fast bowler, but prone to injuries. Let’s hope he gets to play.
Prediction: Tough game to predict. CSK should have the edge here, but if Sanju Samson of the Royals gets going, all bets are off!
The Teams
Chennai Super Kings: 1 Shane Watson, 2 Ambati Rayudu, 3 M Vijay/Suresh Raina, 4 Sam Billings (wk), 5 MS Dhoni/Dhruv Shorey, 6 Ravindra Jadeja, 7 Dwayne Bravo, 8 Deepak Chahar, 9 Harbhajan Singh, 10 Shardul Thakur, 11 Imran Tahir
Rajasthan Royals: 1 Ajinkya Rahane (capt), 2 D’Arcy Short/Heinrich Klassen, 3 Sanju Samson, 4 Rahul Tripathi, 5 Ben Stokes, 6 Jos Buttler (wk), 7 K Gowtham, 8 Shreyas Gopal, 9 Dhawal Kulkarni, 10 Jaydev Unadkat, 11 Ben Laughlin/Joffra Archer
Watch Chennai Super Kings play Rajasthan Royals tonight on Star Sports at 8 pm!
