CHENNAI: Ravindra Jadeja and Tushar Deshpande's three-wicket hauls came in handy for Chennai Super Kings as they restricted Kolkata Knight Riders to 137 for nine in the first innings at the MA Chidambaram stadium here on Monday night.
Jadeja once again proved that there is no substitute for experience with his creditable display.
Put in to bat, KKR had a disastrous start losing Philip Salt to the very first ball of the match to Tushar Deshpande.
Tushar Deshpande bowled a back-of-a-length ball, just outside the off stump and Jadeja took a decent catch at the backward point.
CSK bowling got strengthened with the return of Mustafizur Rahman and Shardul Thakur who was drafted in place of Deepak Chahar who is suffering from a niggle.
Mustafizur opening at the other end was a bit rusty and Angkrish Raghuvanshi took advantage of it to get a boundary. Deshpande's joy of taking a wicket off the first ball of the game was shortlived. In his second over, Sunil Naraine carted the Mumbai pacer all over the park for three boundaries and a six.
Thereafter, the left-right pair of Narine and Raghuvanshi slowly built a partnership.
Ruturaj Gaikwad kept shuffling his bowlers to break this partnership but the pair kept piling runs and added 56 runs in the powerplay. That is when Gaikwad brought Jadeja, his most experienced spinner, in and he answered by striking twice in an over. First, he trapped Raghuvanshi who went for a reverse sweep and missed it completely. Later in the same over, Jadeja foxed Narine into playing a false shot to Theekshana at long off. Suddenly CSK were back in the game with KKR at 60 for three. Now a lot depended upon skipper Shreyas Iyer and the remaining batters to have a go at the CSK attack and post a challenging total.
Jadeja put his experience to effective use and varied his lines. This came in handy as he also pocketed the wicket of Venkatesh Iyer.
Rachin Ravindra, too, gave a good account of himself by bowling tidy lines and not giving the width for both Shreya and Ramandeep to play the shots. Theekshana too joined the party and accounted for the wicket of Ramandeep. With half the team back in the dugout and 85 runs on the board, a lot depended upon the likes of Rinku Singh to do the rescue act. Due to pressure, Rinku could not force the pace. When Russell finally came in he did not have the time to settle down and play his shots. All he could do was strike two boundaries and later Mitchell took an easy catch off Deshpande to send him back. Gaikwad shuffled his bowlers well and also gave them the confidence to make a comeback.