CHENNAI: A confident-looking Lucknow Super Giants, who registered a convincing victory against Delhi on Saturday, will take on Chennai Super Kings at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Monday. On the other hand, Chennai, who lost their opening match against Gujarat Titans, would like to make amends when they face the Lucknow franchise. Chepauk is the den of CSK and with the support of fans, the four-time champions would look to capitalise on familiar conditions to open their account.
Although Lucknow had a good start their skipper KL Rahul underplayed their win and wanted to take one match at a time. ''It was a great start. We were clueless about the pitch (Lucknow), nice way to start. We'll take confidence from this win (against Delhi). We are not going to make too much of it (win), we'll take confidence from it. It's T20 cricket, you need to turn up every day and be ready for the fight. We don't want to think too much about this win,'' said Rahul after the win.
CSK will once again want Ruturaj Gaikward to give them a good start. Riding on a good domestic white-ball season, Gaikwad slammed a polished 92 against Gujarat. Gaikwad, who trained at Chepauk along with the CSK team, looks forward to playing in home conditions. '' Yes, I am in a good space. Hoping to contribute in whichever way I can to the team. I think everyone is excited to play at Chepauk. When I came to know there will be home and away games I was looking forward to playing at the newly renovated stadium. I am sure everyone in the group is also excited because fans will be back, we are hoping to have a full house,'' said Gaikwad.
Speaking on safe targets, Gaikwad said, ''It is difficult to say what would be a safe total beforehand. The surfaces are mostly good for batting, but one can think about the total only as the match progresses. We have to first play a few overs, and have a feel of the wicket. Sometimes the opponent bowlers may bowl well, sometimes the wicket may be sticky. So we have access to all these things.
Rahul hinted that they will field the same playing XI. ''Our team (choice) gives great depth in bowling and batting. I thought we were 30 runs above par. The way Kyle (Mayers) batted and we took an aggressive approach against the spinners and put them (Delhi) under pressure. I thought they (Delhi) started well, but we came back well. It was Wood's day (5 wicket haul) against Delhi, it's a dream for a fast bowler and a team. He made it count. Overall, the bowling group did well and put pressure on the batters,'' said Rahul, indicating that this could be the tempo for the remaining games to come.
Despite a superb knock from Gaikwad, CSK batters could not capitalise as they failed to post a big total against Gujarat. CSK coach Stephen Fleming hoped that his team would do better against Lucknow. ''We thought we were a little bit short. Ruturaj played a great hand, but around him, we just didn't capitalize on the couple of positions we got into. They (Gujarat) bowled well from 12 to 16 overs and we couldn't get that final push that we needed. 180 is a good score, but we were in a position where we could have got 190-200 runs. We were probably a little bit match underdone," said Fleming.
Chennai will look forward to England's Ben Stokes and ace all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja contributing more to the team's success. The last time Jadeja played at Chepauk, he had a five-wicket haul against Tamil Nadu in the Ranji Trophy. Although it was a red ball game he varied the pace well, bowled stump to stump and foxed the strong Tamil Nadu batting line-up.