Shane Watson’s 96 off 53 balls reminded one of the 117 off 57 balls he had scored in the finals against Sunrisers Hyderabad last season. After having gone without scoring a half-century for ten innings, Watson came good today and put the Sunrisers Hyderabad bowlers to the sword. The absence of later acceleration in the Sunrisers inning saw then put up a total of 175 runs. With 7 wickets in hand, they perhaps fell short by about another 15-20 runs.

Shane Watson scored his first half-century of the season to help Chennai Super Kings win over Sunrisers Hyderabad Source

Sunrisers Hyderabad had lost the wicket of Jonny Bairstow early when he tried to cut a Harbhajan Singh delivery but was cramped for width and was caught behind by MS Dhoni. Manish Pandey who was warming the benches for the last three games took off immediately lofting the next ball by Singh to the straight boundary. He was included in the team in place of Kane Williamson whose grandmother expired in New Zealand. Along with David Warner, Manish Pandey put together 115 runs for the second wicket off 90 balls before Harbhajan Singh had Warner stumped by Dhoni. Warner had scored 57 runs off 45 balls and Sunrisers Hyderabad 120 from 13.3 overs.

The Chennai Super Kings bowled well in the latter half of the Sunrisers’ inning preventing the Hyderabad batsmen from running away with the scoring rate. From among the five bowlers used by Dhoni, none of them conceded more than 39 runs in the four overs that they bowled. Vijay Shankar (26 off 20 balls) just could not get going and was out when he scooped a catch to deep mid-wicket off the bowling of Deepak Chahar. Manish Pandey remained not out on 83 runs scored off 49 balls and Sunrisers Hyderabad finished their 20 overs on 175 for three wickets.

Manish Pandey and David Warner put together 115 runs for the second wicket Source

Faff du Plessis got out to a suicidal run after playing the ball to mid-off. Deepak Hooda broke the stumps at the non-striker’s end with a direct hit. Having scored just 16 runs from 4 overs Shane Watson set after Khaleel Ahmed whom he hit for a six and a four in the fifth over. Suresh Raina plundered 22 runs off the final over before the end of the power play by Sandeep Sharma in trying to catch up with the required run rate. Unfortunately for Sunrisers, Bairstow failed to latch on to a faint edge by Watson off the bowling of Sandeep Sharma in the ninth over.

Rashid Khan got the wicket of Suresh Raina when he beat the batsman with a well-disguised googly and had du Plessis stump him. Amabati Rayadu joined Watson at the wicket and the two batsmen together scored 80 runs before they were separated. Watson was particularly harsh on Rashid Khan whose last two overs yielded 31 runs. Watson was caught by Bairstow off Bhuvaneshwar Kumar four runs short of his century in the eighteenth over. There was a slump in the scoring rate after Watson’s dismissal but with 9 runs needed in the final over Kedar Jadhav scored a timely six to see Chennai home despite Rayadu being caught off Sandeep Sharma.

Ambati Rayadu (21 off 25 balls) was out with two balls remaining and 1 run needed for a Chennai victory Source

This win sees Chennai Super Kings back at the top of the table with 16 points having won 8 of their 11 games. Though Chennai Super Kings are almost assured of a place in the playoffs, Sunrisers Hyderabad will have to pull up their socks up to be counted among the last four. Currently placed fifth in the table with 5 wins from their 10 matches, they will miss the services of the consistent Bairstow who goes home to prepare for the World Cup with the English team. Kane Williamson, however, should be back for SRH match against Rajasthan Royals on Saturday.