A washout and a few close finishes leave all five teams in Group A with a chance to make it to the knockout stage of the Champions League T20, going into the double-header at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium on Sunday.
Chennai Super Kings will take on Trinidad & Tobago in the late fixture and a loss would see the visitors get knocked out of the tournament — a possibility that would be as unfortunate as it was avoidable.
Darren Ganga will have to pick up the pieces from not one but two close defeats, the Super Over loss to NSW Blues and the final-ball debacle against Mumbai Indians, but his task is fairly straightforward. T&T will have to win both its remaining fixtures and hope for other results to go its way to stand a chance of making the cut.
CSK comes into the contest true to its coach's words; the side never seems to do things the easy way. The defending champion would have been sitting pretty in the group, had it clinched its opening fixture against Mumbai Indians; a match that it seemingly was in control of until Harbhajan Singh and Lasith Malinga took it away at the death.
Not at its best yet
For the Chennai team, Michael Hussey has been consistent but has received little support at the top of the order, while R. Ashwin has played the lone hand with the ball. Dwayne Bravo's all-round show (unbeaten 46 and two wickets) in the match against Cape Cobras papered over some of the cracks, but the side has clearly not hit its stride yet.
Samuel Badree, Sunil Narine and Sherwin Ganga, T&T's assortment of slow bowlers, have done their best in the tournament to reclaim the ground the side's batsmen have repeatedly conceded, but for the side to upset CSK on its home ground, it would require the batsmen to put up an improved show — T&T made 98 and 139 in its two matches.
Timely return to form
Mumbai Indians, which will take on NSW Blues in a 4 p.m. start, was partly spared the ordeal of having to play two matches in three days at two different venues when the encounter against Cape Cobras was washed out after the first innings on Friday. The depleted side may have ridden its luck so far in the tournament, but Kieron Pollard's return to form seems to be highly opportune.
The all-rounder blasted a 37-ball 58 against Cobras at Bangalore, but might find the slower wicket in Chennai a challenge.
The Blues are the third team in the pool to be sitting on a single win at this stage, and will face the familiar quandary of having to balance its strength in fast bowling against the demands of conditions that favour taking pace off the ball.
Skipper Simon Katich showed he was prepared to change things around when he played Stuart Clark for off-spinner Nathan Hauritz, but still plumped for the left-arm spin of Steve O'Keefe during the Super Over in the side's win against T&T.
Batting is the key
For all the fast bowling talent that the side has at its disposal (teenager Pat Cummins has been called up for the limited-over leg of Australia's tour of South Africa; Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood are touted for big things too), the battle for qualification might have to be won with the bat.
David Warner (20 and 38), Shane Watson (34 and 14) and Daniel Smith (24 and 11), who occupy the top three slots, will have to build on their starts, something they haven't done so far in the tournament.
