An unbeaten opening partnership by Shane Watson and Faf du Plessis ensured the Chennai Super Kings beat the Kings XI Punjab with ease in the 18th match of IPL 2020. CSK managed to reach their target of 179 with 2.2 overs to spare. While Watson made 83 off 53 deliveries, Faf du Plessis was the highest scorer with 87 runs which he made off the same number of deliveries.
With this, CSK reversed a string of three successive defeats to register their second victory of this campaign.
Both the openers made their half centuries with a decent strike rate. While Watson reached 53 with back to back fours just off 31 balls, du Plessis took 33 balls to reach his 50. None of the bowlers including Mohammed Shami shone for KXIP with all of their bowlers taken to the cleaners. Ravi Boshnoi who gave away 33 runs off his four overs emerged the most economical with 8.25 runs per over.
This after effective death over bowling from Shardul Thakur and Dwayne Bravo on Sunday helped CSK restrict KXIP to 178/4 after the latter looked set for a total close to or beyond the 200-run mark at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium.
KXIP's star openers KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal got them off to a good start and their partnership of 61 runs was only broken in the ninth over. Mandeep Singh played a useful cameo of 27 off 16 balls after which Nicholas Pooran put up a 58-run stand for the third wicket.
Shardul took two wickets in two balls in the 18th over to put the breaks on the innings. His first wicket was that of Pooran who was taken by Ravindra Jadeja in the deep after which he dismissed Rahul for 63.
Winning the toss, Punjab elected to bat first but in the end it seemed the total put up by them was way short given the conditions and the way in which CSK went about the chase.