Kohli hit the ball straight to square leg which proved MS Dhoni is still the best at setting the fields.
Chennai Super Kings (CSK) finally registered their first win of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 season on Tuesday (April 12). They defeated an in-form Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) by 23 runs in a high-scoring encounter. But despite posting 216 runs, they had to fight for a win in the end given RCB’s powerpacked batting line-up.
It was important for them to pick early wickets and CSK did so sending back two of their top batters – Faf du Plessis and Virat Kohli – back to the hut with not many on the board. While Maheesh Theekshana dismissed the RCB skipper, MS Dhoni’s tactical acument came to the fore which undid Virat Kohli on the day.
It happened in the fifth over of the innings when Mukesh Choudhary, the left-arm pacer, was brought back into the attack. Just before the start of the over, MS Dhoni changed the field seeing that Kohli was on strike. There was no deep square leg fielder until then but he directed Shivam Dube to move from fine leg to the said fielding position.
The very next ball, Mukesh came round the wicket to deliver a short of a length delivery on leg-stump. Kohli went for the pick up which he timed beautifully. But the ball bounced a bit extra and hit high on the extra and went into the hands of the deep square leg, the only fielder outside the circle on the leg-side, where Dube made no mistake to gobble up a dolly.
Kohli was distraught after getting out as RCB needed him to score big in the steep chase. But mastermind MS Dhoni made sure that his dear friend off the field didn’t stop CSK from winning their first game of the season. Kohli could only make one runs off 3 balls during his short stay in the middle.
Just MSD things ❤️ pic.twitter.com/OE301K298Q
— Vedant Sharma (@VedantSharma_) April 12, 2022
Just @msdhoni things. 🦁 pic.twitter.com/88ho3S6pbf
— Sharukh (@StanMSD) April 13, 2022
Having said that, despite finding themselves at 50/4 at one stage, RCB did well to reach 193 runs in their 20 overs. The likes of Shahbaz Ahmed, Suyash Prabhudessai and Dinesh Karthik played fine cameos and reduced the margin of the loss for the team. The target was always a steep one for them especially after losing superstar batters early in the innings.
