Bengaluru: After their 13-run win over Perth Scorchers in the Champions League Twenty20 on Saturday, Chennai Super Kings skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni said his team will need to adapt and assess the conditions better in the coming games.
Chennai Super Kings, looking far from convincing, still carried enough firepower to get past Perth Scorchers to move closer to the semi-finals.
Put in to bat, the Super Kings rode on Ravindra Jadeja’s 28-ball unbeaten 44 and Dhoni’s 16-ball 35 to post a challenging 155 for 6.
Ravichandran Ashwin then shone with the ball, returning impressive figures of 3 for 20 to restrict the Scorchers to 142 for 7 in 20 overs.
“We made a mistake, how we started. Our intent was good, we went with a positive attitude, but we needed to assess the pitch. We went too hard at the ball,” Dhoni said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
“After that [Mithun] Manhas and [Dwayne] Bravo gave us a crucial partnership. Jadeja’s hitting, the way he went after Hogg who was tough to hit, was very crucial. His innings changed the course of the match. It was important to rotate the strike, he is a talented player and can hit the big sixes,” he added.
Dhoni was happy with the way his bowlers performed.
“We improved today, but we lacked in the batting. We didn’t adapt to the wicket, and play for what the par score here is. The bowling performance was fantastic. It was important not to give too many in the first six overs.”
Man of the match Jadeja said he had backed himself to perform under pressure.
“I was just being myself when I batted, I was just backing myself. The wicket was not easy to bat on. We were just thinking one or two overs could change the game. We just backed ourselves. There was dew for the last four-five overs.
“We are waiting for our next match and let’s see what happens,” Jadeja said.
Scorchers captain Adam Voges believed the Dhoni-Jadeja partnership took the game away from his team.
“Last three overs of their batting innings, Dhoni and Jadeja took the game away from us.
“We bowled really well until that point, but they were unbelievable, and we ended up chasing 20-30 more than we should have. Hoggy [Brad Hogg] bowled beautifully, as did the others, but Dhoni did what he does best,” Voges said.
The victory, their second in four matches, took Super Kings tally to 10 as they finished behind Kolkata Knight Riders in Group A while Scorchers remained on four from three outings and in third behind Lahore Lions, who earlier beat cellar-dwellers Dolphins by 16 runs.
During their chase, the Scorchers could neither put together a big partnership nor any of their batsmen stayed long enough to guide the team to victory.
Losing wickets at regular intervals, the Perth team stumbled with big-hitter Nathan Coulter-Nile (30) being the top scorer. As for the rest, no batsman could really collar the bowling, like Dhoni and Jadeja did earlier.
