It’s calm before the storm. Tonight’s match has no meaning as Delhi Daredevils are at the bottom of the IPL and destined to stay there. It looks like Chennai Super Kings have already booked their spot in the top-2, and are very much in the top 4.
So this is nothing more than a prestige battle for Delhi Daredevils. A chance to show that their young players are made of. They certainly have very decent young players and it is possible things could have been very different had they not made an out of sorts Gautam Gambhir the captain from the start and gone with the young boys.
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For CSK, they are doing very well indeed. They qualified for the playoffs a while back and have Deepak Chahar returning from injury. Ambati Rayudu has been the standout performer for them and they should look forward to make it to their clash against leaders Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Qualifier 1.
Daredevils will do well to give a chance to young players such as Sandeep Lamichhane, the young Nepali leg spinner, all of 17. The boy has already made a lot of waves in the Indian Premier League 2018. His spell in the his very first match is much talked about and he became the #1 Twitter trend in India on that day.
Not bad for a 17 year old!
As for CSK, while their batting is good, their bowling has often been disappointing. Dhoni said as much in an interview. He said, “I think it is the bowling. We had to bowl one particular length and the bowlers were instructed on what they need to bowl and where they need to bowl. That back of the length was a difficult one to hit. We at least got hit 4-5 boundaries off full length.
“What really happens is once you are told what to bowl, you need to be bowling to that area. They need to commit and execute. It is not the planning but the execution that goes haywire,” said Dhoni.
“That was a par score or a par plus score. I think the bowlers let us down to some extent,” he added.
Prediction: Good, easy win for CSK.
The Teams
Delhi Daredevils: 1 Prithvi Shaw, 2 Jason Roy/Colin Munro, 3 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 4 Rishabh Pant (wk), 5 Abhishek Sharma, 6 Vijay Shankar, 7 Liam Plunkett/ Junior Dala, 8 Amit Mishra, 9 Sandeep Lamichhane, 10 Trent Boult, 11 Shahbaz Nadeem
Chennai Super Kings: 1 Shane Watson, 2 Ambati Rayudu, 3 Suresh Raina, 4 MS Dhoni (capt & wk), 5 Sam Billings, 6 Ravindra Jadeja, 7 Dwayne Bravo, 8 Harbhajan Singh, 9 Karn Sharma, 10 Deepak Chahar/ Shardul Thakur, 11 Lungi Ngidi
Watch Delhi Daredevils play Chennai Super Kings tonight at 8 pm Live on Star Sports!
