Defending champion Chennai Super Kings returns home having tasted away defeats on the bounce, its heavyweight credentials in grave doubt. After the rain rule did it in at Kochi and Harbhajan Singh scuttled it out in Mumbai, CSK finds itself at the wrong end of the points table as it takes on Pune Warriors — a team that has also struggled to sustain the momentum of early wins — at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium here on Monday.
A loss here will bring either side closer to desperation, cornering it if not in an entirely irrevocable situation then bringing it at least a step closer to hopelessness.
Chennai has a perfect record in home games this edition — all three defeats have come in away games — and once again it is to the deviousness of the Chepauk track, and the obvious home advantage it offers, that M.S. Dhoni and his men will turn to for checking a losing trend.
Bowling worries
Chennai's last defeat was to Mumbai Indians when its pursuit of 165 went haywire despite a solid platform laid by Michael Hussey and S. Badrinath.
The top order has been the least of Chennai's worries. The batting has clicked, if not in unison then in isolated instances of excellence, and it is in the bowling department that worries fester; more specifically Chennai has struggled to unearth an efficient local bowling option.
The inclusion of medium-pacer Joginder Sharma for left-arm spinner Shadab Jakati didn't quite work against Mumbai, the former being tonked around as much, if not more, as Jakati was in the games preceding the one at Wankhede.
Doug Bollinger's success has proved the imperativeness of having a genuine firebrand in the eleven (a ready illustration being his sustained assault on Rohit Sharma's groin region and the magnificent last over he bowled to Kieron Pollard and Andrew Symonds against Mumbai).
Bollinger's contest against an imperious Jesse Ryder and R. Ashwin's off-spin to the left-handed Yuvraj Singh promise to be the highlights of the Chennai-Pune match.
Although Ashwin has been steady, Albie Morkel, barring the match against Mumbai, has been expensive, while Tim Southee, aside from the last over yorker-feat against Kolkata in the first game, has been erratic.
Skipper Dhoni appeared to have taken a knock on his knee against Mumbai. But Morkel said at a press conference on Sunday that the injury was “nothing serious…just a niggle”.
Smith's woes
Successive defeats mean Pune too will be itching for a favourable result. Its potential match-winners — Yuvraj, Ryder and Robin Uthappa — have all crackled without really exploding and the lone sore spot in the line-up remains Graeme Smith, who seems to have dragged his wretched World Cup form into the money-spinning league.
Pune's bowlers, although the most unheralded in the entire competition, are doing a decent job. Leg-spinner Rahul Sharma has gone for 5.61 runs per over across four games, and the others — Ryder (ER 6.38), left-arm seamer Shrikant Wagh (7.30), medium-pacer Alfonso Thomas (7.38) and South African import Wayne Parnell (7.78) — all boast economy rates of less than eight, a considerable achievement amid the carnage of a Twenty20 competition.
