A sensational Suresh Raina spurred Chennai Super Kings to a mammoth victory over South Africa’s Dolphins on Monday night in the Champions League Twenty20.
Raina smacked four boundaries and eight sixes en route to making 90 from only 43 balls as he paced a CSK side that reached 242. His 91-run second-wicket partnership with Brendon McCullum, himself responsible for a near half-century with 49 runs, paced the line-up to a practically insurmountable total.
Dolphins, led by solid top-half of the order efforts from Morne van Wyk (17), Cameron Delport (34), Cody Chetty (38) and Vaughn van Jaarsveld (30) made it to 188, but were never a serious threat to catch Chennai.
Delport, making 34 from just nine balls, Chetty with 38 from 28 and Van Wyk reaching 17 from seven, knocked 10 fours and five sixes between them, getting to 90 for 3 in response, but the South African side would never make much more noise.
Mohit Sharma cut them down before they could, taking the second, third and fourth wickets to pave the way for relatively quiet bottom half of the order. Sharma finished with a four-wicket haul for 41 runs against an understandbaly aggressive Dolphins batting attack.
Ravichandran Ashwin was hit for only 38 runs in his four overs, taking a wicket. Ashish Nehra claimed a pair of wickets for 42 runs in four overs as well.
Dwayne Bravo bested them all, though, taking the fourth and fifth wickets of Chetty and Van Jaarsveld to put any Dolphins hopes to bed. He allowed only 17 runs in his four overs.
Bravo added 11 runs off nine balls, followed by Ravindra Jadeja, whose 40 from 14 put CSK out of any realistic reach.
Faf du Plessis also had 30 runs from 19 deliveries for the Super Kings.
Kyle Abbott claimed a wicket for 37 runs in four overs for the Dolphins and Robbie Frynlick took two for 52 runs in four overs to lead a snake-bitten bowling attack.
The South Africans fell to the bottom of the Group A table with two losses and a negative-1.375 run rate already that may be too hard to turn around, with matches to come still against Lahore Lions and Kolkata Knight Riders.
Chennai, meanwhile, rose to second in bouncing back from an opening loss to Kolkata. They’ll face Lahore, beaten by Kolkata as well on Sunday, themselves on Thursday.
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