Indian Premier League T20 Cricket: Overview of First 2 Matches Played

Hello Cricket Lovers,

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We witnessed the IPL back on track with a match between last year's runners up Chennai Super Kings versus last years winners Mumbai Indians and it was a match which went to the wire with Chennai Super Kings winning it with 4 balls to spare.

We also witnessed the match going to Super Over in just second match in this edition with Delhi Capitals versus Kings XI Punjab match played today.

Let's get into more details about these 2 matches with a preview of the next match between 2 South Indian teams of **Royal Challengers Bangalore versus Sunrisers Hyderabad.

Match 1: Chennai Super Kings against Mumbai Indians:

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Put into bat after losing the toss, Mumbai Indians started very well by posting their 50 in Sixth over itself, but lost both their openers Rohit Sharma(12 runs) and Quinton De Kock(33 runs).

It was Sourabh Tiwari who took the onus of scoring some brisk runs in middle overs by scoring 42 runs from 31 balls, but wicket kept falling at the other end for Mumbai.

They were able to score 162 due to some cameos from Hardik Pandya and Kieron Pollard.

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Chennai Super Kings started on a bad note with both openers (Murali Vijay and Shane Watson) back in the hut in second over itself.

Then came a good partnership between Ambati Rayudu (71 runs) and Faf Du Plessis (58 runs not out) who put on 100+ score.

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Once Rayudu and next batsman Ravindra Jadeja departed in quick succession, Chennai needed around 30 runs from last 3 overs and Sam Curran got a chance to bat higher up the order before MS Dhoni came in and he scored a quickfire 18 from 6 balls to bring down the required rate below 6!!!

Eventually, Chennai Super Kings won the match with 4 balls to spare and once again Captain Cool, MS Dhoni kept his cool even when asking rate went over 10 and his decision to send Sam Curran before himself was a master move in that win.

Match 2: Delhi Capitals versus Kings XI Punjab:

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The second match completed today was between Kings XI Punjab and Delhi Capitals.

Captained by 2 of India's young players from current generation in KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer, both the teams are having some talented Indian players along with bunch of experienced foreign players.

Having won the toss, Kings XI Punjab elected to field first so as to asses how the pitch behaves and Delhi started the innings with Prithvi Shaw and Shikhar Dhawan, but both of them along with number 3 batsman Shimron Hetmyer lost out quickly to reduce Delhi to 3 for 13.

At that point, Captain Shreyas Iyer was joined by one of India's hard hitters right now, Rishabh Pant to re-build the innings and they added 73 runs before they got out in quick succession.

Then came the Aussie all-rounder Marcus Stoinis to score quick 53 from just 21 balls and helped the team score 157.

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Pick of the bowlers for Kings XI Punjab was Mohammad Shami with taking 3 wickets for just 15 runs from his quota of 4 overs.

Chasing 154 for win, Kings XI Punjab were reduced to 35 for 4 by the time power play overs got finished with Mayank Agarwal holding one end.

Mayank had couple of low partnerships with lower order batsmen Sarfraz Khan and K Gowtham, but just fell when a single was required for win in final over with one more ball left and eventually, the match went to super over as next batsman also got out on final ball of the innings.

Super Over:

Kings XI Punjab got the chance to bat first in Super Over, but were able to score just 2 in 3 deliveries losing out 2 batsmen and Delhi Capitals overhauled the required 3 runs from 3 balls to win the match from what it looked like an easy win for Punjab.

Punjab have to blame themselves for losing it out from winning position with 1 run required from 3 deliveries, but a dot and couple of wickets from those 3 last deliveries made it to go for the Super over and Kagiso Rabada was superb for Delhi Capitals to take out 2 wickets in 3 deliveries.

Tomorrow's Match: Royal Challengers Bangalore versus Sunrisers Hyderabad:

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We will witness the match between 2 South Indian teams in Royal Challengers Bangalore and Sunrisers Hyderabad from Dubai International Stadium.

RCB captain Virat Kohli will be eager to perform well and take the team to win and have a chance of lifting the trophy for the first time.

RCB's new recruits including Aussie T20 team captain Aron Finch along with all-rounder Chris Morris, Isuru Udana**, Dale Steyn and young Indian players will be looking to perform and help team win.

On the other side, Sunrisers Hyderabad will also be looking to perform well with inclusion of quality all-rounders in Mitchell Marsh and Fabian Allen along with other new recruits.

Being an RCB fan, I want to see Virat Kohli's team winning this match to have confidence at the beginning of this tournament.

That is all guys form me right now, I hope you enjoyed reading my previous blog about Indian Premier League with introduction of all the teams with their squad.

I will be back with details of RCB vs SRH by tomorrow and look forward to see the feedback from you on these blogs related to Cricket.

Wishing you Happy Monday and a nice week ahead :)

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