Chennai Super Kings were largely untroubled in their final match as they coasted to a four-wicket victory that left Yorkshire winless in the Champions League T20 proper. S Badrinath, often overlooked in a batting line-up of star names, showed once again how important he is to the Super Kings’ middle order, holding together the innings after three of his top-order colleagues holed out attempting to hammer the ball out of Kingsmead.
The Yorkshire top-order, too, came up short once again, as they have invariably in this tournament, before Gary Ballance smashed his second half-century of the CLT20 to lead them to a respectable 140.
None of the regular top three of Andrew Gale, Adam Lyth and Joe Root have reached 30 in this competition, which repeatedly left Yorkshire three down early. It was no different today as Gale chipped a catch to cover after a brisk 23, before Lyth was dismissed in a carbon-copy manner and Root gloved a leg-side ball to the keeper to leave Yorkshire at 43 for 3.
The Yorkshire middle-order had been boosted by the return of David Miller, back after domestic duties with the Dolphins, and he helped the team recover through a big stand with Ballance. They took their time to get going – overs 6-10 only yielded 21 runs – but the introduction of Super Kings’ second-string bowlers helped boost the rate. Suresh Raina, captaining in place of MS Dhoni, was swept for 12 in his first over, and Ravindra Jadeja was thumped for two sixes in his first.
Dhoni, playing his first Super Kings match as non-captain, also didn’t keep wickets, bowling some seam-up instead. He bowled a couple of wayward overs, experimenting with back-of-the-hand slower balls, and was whipped by Ballance for two consecutive sixes as Yorkshire’s run-rate finally hit seven.
Doug Bollinger, who was the best of the Super Kings’ bowlers, returned to end the stand by dismissing Miller, but Ballance whacked a couple of sixes off Ben Hilfenhaus in the penultimate over to lift Yorkshire towards 140.
Super Kings lost both M Vijay and Faf du Plessis in the Powerplay, but Badrinath was involved in two solid partnerships to put them on course for a second consolation victory. First, he paired up with Raina, compiling 48 to stabilise the innings, and then added 43 with Dhoni as Yorkshire struggled to build pressure on the Super Kings.
Badrinath missed out on a half-century after he was bowled attempting a scoop, and Iain Wardlaw added a second scalp when Dhoni missed an attempted helicopter shot, though those two wickets were too late to have an impact against a line-up with plenty of depth.
