We start our preview of the finals of the CLT20 between the Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders with the big news. Sunil Narine won’t play this match. He has been suspended because of a suspect bowling action, where he has been found to throw his faster ball. What that means is that the Knight Riders have lost their best player, their most influential bowler, one who has single-handedly won several T20 matches for them, both in the IPL and in the Champions League, over several years in the past.
There is no doubt that the two sides are by far the best in the competition and deserve to be here, in the final to be played at Bangalore’s Chinnaswamy Stadium. But Dhoni’s boys would be thrilled that Narine isn’t playing though, as they last time they played him, they could only get 9 runs from Narine’s 4 fours, while scoring 148 off the other 16 overs bowled by the other Kolkata Knight Riders bowlers – so utterly dominant has Narine been. Narine is not only the highest wicket-taker in this competition, he also has the best economy rate as well. So obviously, his loss is a massive one, and Knight Riders start off as distinct underdogs because of that.
The Kolkata team do have other decent bowlers though, but they have a formidable challenge in the form of the Chennai side’s extraordinary batting line-up, which has match winners in almost every position – Brendon McCullum, Dwayne Smith and Suresh Raina are an amazing top-3 for a T20 side. And then the Super Kings have perhaps the best limited overs batsmen in the world in Faf du Plessis, MS Dhoni at four and five. Dwayne Bravo and Ravindra Jadeja are the most explosive number six and number seven you can get in this form of cricket as well. How could Kolkata Knight Riders possibly match that? With Narine’s loss, a win for the Kolkata team looks Mission Impossible, to say the least.
For this match, the Chennai Super Kings are expected to include an extra pace option in Ishwar Pandey in place of the third spinner Pawan Negi because of the short boundaries here at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore. For Knight Riders, they would hope for the young Aussie pace sensation Pat Cummins to strike fear into the hearts of the Chennai Super Kings batsmen and make an immediate impact. Cummins now seems to be the Kolkata team’s only strike bowler with Narine’s departure.
The Teams :
Chennai Super Kings: 1 Dwayne Smith, 2 Brendon McCullum, 3 Suresh Raina, 4 Faf du Plessis, 5 Dwayne Bravo, 6 MS Dhoni (capt & wk), 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 R Ashwin, 9 Ishwar Pandey/Pawan Negi, 10 Mohit Sharma, 11 Ashish Nehra
Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Robin Uthappa (wk), 2 Gautam Gambhir (capt), 3 Jacques Kallis, 4 Manish Pandey, 5 Yusuf Pathan, 6 Ryan ten Doeschate, 7 Suryakumar Yadav, 8 Andre Russell, 9 Piyush Chawla, 10 Pat Cummins, 11 Kuldeep Yadav
