Chennai Super Kings were left reeling at the Chepauk Stadium as Punjab Kings made it back-to-back wins with a comfortable seven-wicket victory to retain a slim, outside chance at making the playoffs. They have also become the second team to beat CSK five times in a row, an honour they now share with Mumbai Indians.

It was a far cry from PBKS’ jaw-dropping success against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) that lifted them out of a three-game losing slump. This time their spinners stole the show, restricting CSK to 162 for 7. After Sam Curran opted to bowl on a sweltering evening in Chennai, Rahul Chahar and Harpreet Brar choked the life out of the batting, taking two wickets apiece and both going boundaryless for their respective four overs. Ruturaj Gaikwad’s  62 held together a patchy 20 overs.

CSK were hampered when Deepak Chahar limped off after bowling the first two deliveries of the chase, leaving them a bowler short. Though Richard Gleeson marked his IPL debut with the dismissal of Prabhsimran Singh, 64 off 37 deliveries between Jonny Bairstow and Rilee Roussouw put them ahead of the rate. Both could and perhaps should have seen their side home. But it was eventually Curran and Shashank Singh who waltzed over the line with 13 deliveries to spare.

To say CSK were stuck midway through their innings would be an understatement. After Ajinkya Rahane finished the powerplay with three successive fours off Sam Curran, the hosts went without a boundary off the bat for all of 55 deliveries – the longest stretch this season, beating Gujarat Titan’s 38 against Delhi Capitals.

Full credit should go to the dual spin threat of Brar and Rahul. The left-arm spinner and legspinner, respectively, combined for seven overs on the trot from the sixth to bring the hosts to a standstill. They prised out three wickets to destroy any momentum CSK had after their highest opening stand of the campaign (64). Two of them – Shivam Dube and Ravindra Jadeja – were left-hand batters, as CSK tried to frontload their batting card with left-hand batters to counter the direction of turn of both spinners. Match-ups be damned, it simply did not work.

Brar bowled his four overs – 2 for 17 – on the bounce; wicket-to-wicket, giving the odd one the chance to turn, but largely giving batters nothing to work with. Just as it looked like he would be the main man of the double act, Rahul returned in the 19th and went for just three (more on that later), taking out the leg stump of Moeen Ali – another legbreak – along the way to finish with 2 for 16 himself.

OK, he was run-out chasing a second run off the final delivery. But the point still stands –  MS Dhoni is yet to be dismissed by a bowler at the 2024 IPL. That’s not to say PBKS did not have the measure of him.

Bowling spinners at the death can be risky business. Teams are increasingly doing it, but not often as late as the 19th over, or with a wristspinner with the relative lack of experience of Rahul compared to the likes of Rashid Khan or Yuzvendra Chahal.

But Dhoni has not been the most fluent of batters against spin for some time now, and CSK make sure he comes late enough not to have to deal with the turning ball. Out of the 37 balls he had faced this season before Wednesday, only three were from spinners.

It was a percentage move by PBKS to bowl Rahul in the penultimate over of the innings with Dhoni on strike. Chahar did his job by keeping the ball away from Dhoni’s hitting arc, towards the leg side. Three out of four balls were sent down outside the off stump. The only time Chahar fired one down the leg was when Dhoni tried to create something by moving towards off, and that one missed leg stump by a whisker.

Who knows how badly things would have gone for CSK were it not for their captain. Gaikwad’s fifth 50-plus score of the season was the only score of note and clarity. It also continued his remarkable scoring streak at Chepauk, which now sees him boast 396 runs at this venue, leading the way for a CSK batter at home in an IPL season. The previous best was Devon Conway’s 390 in 2023, and Gaikwad has one more knock at home in the regular season to add some gloss to that accolade.

The first 30 of his 62 came in the opening stand with Rahane, but its demise elicited a mini-collapse to 70 for 3. Gaikwad’s last 17 runs came off just nine deliveries, which included bringing up a 44-ball half-century with the first six of the innings, closely followed by a second.

With the bowling stocks looking a little light with Matheesha Pathirana and Tushar Deshpande missing through injury and illness, and Mustafizur Rahman now returning to Bangladesh, Gaikward and the CSK management have much to consider. Thankfully, the captain’s form is not a problem, though he’d almost certainly give up his newly-acquired orange cap if it meant winning a toss.

A scuffed boundary beyond the gloves of Jitesh Sharma was met with a look of relief by Sameer Rizvi. Not only was it his first boundary – off his 22nd delivery – but it ended the drought off the bat. A new, unwanted record.

Now 21 off 22, Rizvi, who was substituted in to replace Rahane, decided to puff his chest out. Kagiso Rabada’s extra pace, he thought, would allow him to guide more deliberately behind square. Across he stepped, bat face offered fully to ramp the ball into the beyond. Contact with the ball was crisp, probably the cleanest he had managed on the night. Sadly, Harshal Patel’s hustle from deep third was rewarded with a catch. The impact substitute has come under scrutiny, posited as a factor for the leap in scoring this season. Here was an example of how it can go wrong.

Brief scores:
Chennai Super Kings 162/7 in 20 overs (Ajinkya Rahane 29, Ruturaj Gaikwad 62, Sameer Rizvi 21; Kagiso Rabada 1-23, Arshdeep Singh 1-52,  Rahul Chahar 2-16, Harpreet Brar 2-17) lost to Punjab Kings 163/3 in 17.5 overs (Jonny Bairstow 46, Rilee Rossouw 43, Shashank Singh 25*, Sam Curran 26*; Shardul Thakur 1-48, Richard Gleeson 1-30, Shivam Dube 1-14) by seven wickets.

(Cricinfo)