It is turning out to be a start that the four-time title winners and one of the most successful teams in the history of Indian T20 Cricket League, Chennai, never imagined.
At the time when their legendary captain M Dhonii stepped away from the role of leadership of the franchise, having led them from the start of the competition going all the way back in 2008, the team expressed that it was ready for change.
The defending champions of the Indian T20 Cricket League 20202 Chennai were not expected to face much trouble given that Dhonii was still around and the incoming captain Ravindra Jadeja — a franchise loyalist since 2012 — was ready for shoulder leadership responsibilities.
While there are a lot of parameters left to be considered in order to assess the captaincy skills of Jadeja who is filling in the massive shoes of Dhonii, there certainly are early warning signs that Chennai will have to go through real, hard grind in order to sustain their aura as well as competitiveness given that most of the stars are going to walk away in the near future.
One such challenge, or rather moment of introspection, arrived for the franchise on Saturday afternoon when another listless team over the past two years, Hyderabad, handed them a resounding 8-wicket thrashing in the Match No 17 played at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai.
Hyderabad produced an all-round performance to record only their 5th victory against Chennai’s 12 in their overall 17 meetings in history on Saturday, and also registered their first-ever victory in the ongoing edition of the world's biggest T20 cricket league.
The Kane Williamson-led side showed incredible determination, adaptiveness as well as depth to not only challenge Chennai's authority but taught them a crucial lesson of bouncing back from the most adverse situations — something that the four-time winners have done in the past and are required to do it all over again.
Hyderabad made most of the situations on Saturday afternoon to limit Chennai to a moderate total of 154/7 with all of their bowlers chipping in with wickets. The pick among them was all-rounder Washington Sundar, returned with figures of 4-0-21-2, accounting for the likes of Ambati Rayudu for 27 and Robin Uthappa (15).
The left-arm Tamil Nadu seam bowler T Natarajan was also impressive, taking 4-0-30-2 with his dismissals including that of Shivam Dube (3) and Ruturaj Gaikwad (16).
Natarajan produced a wonderful delivery to get rid of the troubled Chennai opener Gaikwad — who finally scored in double digits after getting a mere 2 runs in the first 3 matches — pitching the ball in the line of the middle stump and flicking it through the gate of the Chennai batsman to knock down his middle stump.
Moeen Ali really has been a consistent performer for Chennai both with the bat and the ball and the English all-rounder scored a vital 48 from 35 balls with the help of 3 boundaries and 2 sixes to help their total go past the 150-run mark.
The left-handed batsman Moeen Ali was dismissed by South Africa all rounder Aiden Markram, who bowled only one over in the game.
Chennai were also let down by their lower-order as captain Jadeja could manage only 23 from 15 balls with the help of 2 boundaries while former skipper Dhonii made 4 before being dismissed by Hyderabad debutant Marco Jansen while the pair of Dwayne Bravo (8) and Chris Jordan (6) could not do much damage.
In their reply, Abhishek Sharma finally came good for Hyderabad after repeated opportunities at the top, scoring a match-winning 75 from only 50 balls with the help of 5 boundaries and 3 sixes to anchor the chase for his team on Saturday evening.
Abhishek Sharma, who is highly spoken in his state Punjab and backed by the legendary Indian all-rounder Yuvraj Singh, added 89 runs for the first wicket with Hyderabad and New Zealand captain Kane Williamson, who was also among runs.
The right-handed Williamson faced 40 balls to score 32 with the help of a couple of boundaries and a six to record his first score of significance in the tournament.
Hyderabad No 3 batsman Rahul Tripathi remained unbeaten on 39 from 15 balls in a knock that included 5 boundaries and 2 sixes. The 2016 edition’s title winners finished the game in 17.4 overs, scoring 155/2.
Chennai had earlier given a debut to Sri Lanka spinner Maheesh Theekshana, who remained wicketless in his maiden outing and returned with 4-0-31-0. Among the wicket-takers were Mukesh Choudhary (1/30) and Dwayne Bravo (1/29 in 2.4 overs).
Chennai will be desperate to bounce back when they face a strong outfit in Bangalore on April 12 whereas Hyderabad will have their upcoming challenge against an in-form team in Gujarat, whom they lock horns with on Monday night.
Devarchit Varma is a cricket writer and journalist with an experience of more than a decade, having worked at Hindustan Times (newspaper) and CricketCountry (website). Along with covering international and domestic cricket, he has also interviewed several current and former top players such as Rohit Sharma, Steve Smith, Dale Steyn, Michael Hussey, Jacques Kallis, Brendon McCullum, Shane Watson, Lasith Malinga and many more. He has also worked in other beats as a journalist in Bollywood (Reliance BigOye) and IT (SiliconIndia) industries.
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