Twenty20 nomad Liam Livingstone justified his Rs 11.50 crore price-tag with a smashing 32-ball 60 however Chennai Super Kings got here again strongly on the dying to limit Punjab Kings to 180 for 8 in an Indian Premier League match right here on Sunday.
CSK gave away solely 71 runs within the back-10 with lots of credit score going to their troika of abroad pacers — Dwaine Pretorius (4-0-30-2), Dwayne Bravo (3-0-32-1) and Chris Jordan (4-0-23-2), who used variations to good impact, stifling the opposition batters.
In truth, bulk of the 55 dot balls got here within the second half of the Punjab innings.
Livingstone, some of the damaging T20 batters throughout world leagues, lastly got here good with 5 fours and an equal variety of sixes, sending the CSK bowlers on a leather-hunt in the course of the preliminary overs.
Deepak Chahar’s absence has severely handicapped ‘de-facto’ captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s choices as rookie left-arm seamer Mukesh Choudhary (4-0-52-1) paid dearly for his inexperience coupled with jangling nerves.
There have been 100 metre plus sixes off size balls and Livingstone would usually shimmy down the monitor to disturb the size as he did with the wily Bravo. Even the thick edges went for six with CSK bowlers wanting clueless until he was there on the crease.
In truth, Bravo, beneath strain, pressured Dhoni to face as much as the stumps to be able to forestall Livingstone from charging down the monitor.
‘On paper’ skipper Jadeja (4-0-34-1) lastly received his man caught at quick third-man however even he regarded atypical with no assist from the flat Brabourne Stadium deck.
Livingstone and Shikhar Dhawan (33 off 24 balls) added 95 for the third wicket in simply 8.4 overs and it appeared that one other 200 plus whole was on the playing cards.
By the time Dhawan was fooled by a Bravo slower, Punjab had laid the platform, scoring 109 within the first 10 overs, which sadly the later batters couldn’t capitalise on.
But as soon as Livingstone was out, the ‘Reds’ couldn’t keep the momentum though Vidarbha’s Jitesh Sharma (26 off 17 balls) turned the most recent unheralded home expertise to announce his arrival with some audacious strokeplay.
Shahrukh Khan (6 off 11 balls), who has bullied home bowlers for enjoyable in nationwide tournaments, has been studied properly and is discovering it troublesome to get going on the larger stage in opposition to higher high quality of bowlers.
Pretorius and Jordan stored deliveries broad and full exterior the off-stump and on the base of bat, not permitting them something within the arc.
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