Last Update: April 13, 2023, 3:31 PM IST
MS Dhoni (left) and Sanju Samson during the Chepauk clash. (pic credit: sportzpix)
MS Dhoni scored an unbeaten 32 off 17 balls against the Rajasthan Royals in Chennai on Wednesday night.
The crowd that thronged the Chepauk Stadium on Wednesday night specially witnessed MS Dhoni along with the Chennai Super Kings skipper as he guided his team to a last-ball victory against Rajasthan Royals in their IPL 2023 clash. Chasing 176, Dhoni scored an unbeaten 32 off 17 balls, hitting one four and three sixes but CSK fell four runs short of the target.
When Dhoni came out to bat, CSK needed 63 runs to win off 30 balls. Some tight overs from Ravichandran Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal handed CSK 54 runs to win in three overs.
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Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja started their performances by scoring 33 runs in the next two overs.
With 21 needed in the final over, Dhoni hit two powerful sixes over the boundary and hit as many sixes, before Sandeep Sharma held his nerves and scored just three runs in his remaining three balls.
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In the post-match presentation, RR skipper Sanju Samson admitted that he never felt the game was in his team’s grasp because of Dhoni’s presence.
Samson said, ‘The last two overs were tense, I tried to push it deep but you are never safe with that guy.’
And then presenter Sanjay Manjrekar asked Samson if he had any data on how to tackle Dhoni.
“Nothing. Nothing works,” replied Samson, smiling.
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Dhoni blamed his batsmen for the close defeat for not being able to rotate the strike in the middle overs.
“I think we needed some more strike rotation in the middle overs, not much for the spinners but they had experienced spinners and we couldn’t rotate the strike. It wasn’t that difficult and the ownership (for the loss) ) should come from the batsmen,” Dhoni told the broadcasters after the match.
CSK will face Royal Challengers Bangalore on April 17 at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium.
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