Coming back from a two-year ban, playing the first match against the arch-rivals Mumbai Indians at the iconic Wankhede Stadium, it turned out to be a thrilling start for Chennai Super Kings in the first game of IPL 2018 on April 7. After serving a two-year ban from the league, CSK were set to face MI in the opening match of the season and it turned out to be a thrilling encounter between both the teams to kickstart the season.
For CSK, Dwayne Bravo turned out to be a star with his 68-run knock off just 30 balls. Talking about the match, batting first, MI posted 165/4 in their 20 overs with the help of the contributions from Ishan Kishan (40 off 29), Suryakumar Yadav (43 off 29) and Krunal Pandya (41* off 22). Chasing the winning target, CSK had a disastrous start as they kept losing wickets at regular intervals and were reduced to 75/5 in 12 overs. After that, Dwayne Bravo took charge of the innings and kept CSK’s hopes alive with wickets falling from the other end.
CSK defeated MI in last ball thriller in IPL 2018 opener
Despite Dwayne Bravo scoring runs, CSK lost their eight wickets for 118 runs in 16.3 overs. However, Bravo was single-handedly taking CSK towards the winning target. He lost his wicket just before the last over after scoring 68(30) runs, smashing three fours and seven sixes. Now, CSK needed seven runs from the last six balls and Kedar Jadhav, who was retired hurt was back to bat again as CSK had only one wicket left.
Kedar Jadhav couldn’t get a single score on the first three balls and now CSK needed seven runs from just three balls. After that, Jadhav went on to smash as six and four in the next two deliveries as CSK clinched a thrilling victory with just one ball left in their IPL comeback.
