By Prakash Nair 
Chennai, April 3: CSK are at home. Punjab Kings are coming. And honestly, for the first time in a long time, it does not feel like Chepauk is the fortress it used to be.
Match 7 of IPL 2026 kicks off at 7:30 PM tonight at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. Toss is at 7. Star Sports has the broadcast. JioHotstar for streaming.
Now let’s get into it.
CSK Got Taken Apart Last Week. No Sugarcoating It.
The Guwahati game was bad. Really bad.
Ruturaj Gaikwad six runs. Sanju Samson also six runs, on his debut for a new franchise, in front of cameras, with all the pressure. Ayush Mhatre zero. Duck. First ball probably. Matthew Short two. The top four combined for 14 runs.
And then Jamie Overton, a fast bowler who bats at seven, ended up as the top scorer with 43. When your number seven is saving your blushes, you know the batting order collapsed completely.
The final score was 127 all out. In 19.4 overs.
Rajasthan Royals chased it in 12 overs. A teenager named Vaibhav Sooryavanshi hit 52 off 15 balls and basically wrapped the game up before it started. CSK’s bowlers had no answers. The whole thing was over before most people watching had even warmed up to the match.
It was not just a defeat. It was a proper hammering. And now they come home.
The Problem Is That Home Doesn’t Feel Like Home Anymore Either.
Here is something that doesn’t get talked about enough.
Punjab Kings have actually won more games at Chepauk than CSK have. Five wins against four for CSK in nine meetings at this ground. They have won their last three visits here in a row. Last season they came to Chennai and beat CSK by four wickets. Year before that, same story. Same ground. Same result.
So when someone says “CSK will be better at home,” that is only partly true. The crowd will help, absolutely. Chepauk on a Friday night is one of the most electric atmospheres in world cricket. But PBKS have beaten that crowd before. More than once.
And they’re coming in with confidence right now.
Punjab Kings Won Their First Game and Looked Good Doing It.
They beat Gujarat Titans at home in Mullanpur. Restricted them to 162. Then in the chase, they were wobbling a bit in the middle and then a 24-year-old Australian named Cooper Connolly walked out and just took the game away from GT.
72 not out. 44 balls. Five fours, five sixes. On his IPL debut.
The crazy part? Connolly batted at number three, ahead of Shreyas Iyer himself. Think about that. Last season Shreyas scored 604 runs batting at three. This year Ponting moved him to four and brought in a debutant ahead of him. That is the kind of squad depth that makes PBKS genuinely dangerous this year.
Their bowling was solid too. Vijaykumar Vyshak took three wickets. Yuzvendra Chahal took two. Arshdeep Singh was tidy. They look organised and settled and like a team that knows exactly what it wants to do.
CSK, at this point in the season, do not look like that.
Dhoni Is Still Not Playing. And That Changes Everything.
Look, MS Dhoni not playing is not just about one batting position being empty. That’s not how it works with him.
Dhoni is the reason CSK’s lower order has never properly panicked in the last 15 years. His presence in the dressing room changes how the team approaches the last five overs. The opposition knows he could walk out at any moment. That knowledge alone affects their planning. Their field settings. Their bowler selection.
He’s not there tonight. Calf strain. He hasn’t played a single ball this season.
Dewald Brevis is also out. Side strain. He tried to bat in the nets apparently but only faced throwdowns and was barely moving freely. Almost certainly not playing tonight.
So Sanju Samson who has been brought in as the new face of this CSK rebuild now has to do everything. Keep wicket, build the innings, anchor the middle overs, and find a way to finish games that Dhoni used to close out with his eyes half shut. That is enormous pressure on a player in just his second game for a new team.
The One Name CSK Are Dreading Most Is Yuzvendra Chahal.
Chahal is 35 now. He is not the fastest. He is not the most athletic man in the field. But on a Chepauk surface that grips and turns a little, he is genuinely the most dangerous bowler in this PBKS attack.
He has 23 IPL wickets against CSK alone. His economy rate against them is 7.1 that’s exceptional for a wrist spinner who attacks every ball.
But here is the specific thing that should worry CSK tonight. Chahal has dismissed Sanju Samson five times in 12 innings. Just five wickets but 12 innings and Samson has still only scored 61 runs against him in total. No bowler in IPL history has dominated Samson so completely.
The last time Chahal played CSK at this ground, he took a hat-trick.
So Samson walks into bat tonight knowing that the man on the other end has made a habit of getting him out, on this exact ground, more than any bowler alive. That is not a comfortable feeling.
Arshdeep vs Gaikwad. This One Is Important.
Arshdeep Singh has dismissed Ruturaj Gaikwad three times in the IPL. Conceded just 40 runs against him. Gaikwad’s strike rate against Arshdeep is 114 well below his usual scoring rate.
Arshdeep bowls left arm, hits the pitch hard, and shapes the ball away from right handers. Gaikwad has never looked fully comfortable against that angle with a new ball.
If Arshdeep gets him in the first two overs, CSK’s chase or total is in serious trouble before it even gets going.
On the other side, Khaleel Ahmed has three IPL wickets against Shreyas Iyer from eight meetings. 33 runs total. If Khaleel can remove Shreyas early, PBKS lose their most important anchor in the middle overs.
These two battles at the top of the innings will define the whole evening. Everything else follows from them.
What the Pitch Does and Why the Toss Matters Tonight.
Chepauk is not going to be a flat batting surface tonight. There’s a bit of grass on it according to reports, which means the new ball will move. As the game goes on, the surface will slow down and spinners like Noor Ahmad and Chahal will get some grip and turn.
Average first innings score here in IPL is around 164. Teams batting first have won eight of the last 12 IPL matches at this venue.
But dew is the big factor after dark in Chennai in April. By the second innings, the outfield gets slippery, the ball stops gripping, and bowling becomes very hard. That is why every single IPL 2026 toss winner so far has chosen to field first. Tonight will almost certainly follow the same pattern.
Whoever bats second will have an easier time of it. Which means the toss is almost as important as the playing XI tonight.
Predicted Teams
CSK will likely go with: Sanju Samson, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ayush Mhatre, Matt Short, Shivam Dube, Kartik Sharma, Prashant Veer, Jamie Overton, Matt Henry, Khaleel Ahmed, Noor Ahmad and Anshul Kamboj.
PBKS expected to field: Priyansh Arya, Prabhsimran Singh, Cooper Connolly, Shreyas Iyer, Nehal Wadhera, Shashank Singh, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Jansen, Xavier Bartlett, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Arshdeep Singh and Yuzvendra Chahal.
So Who Actually Wins Tonight?
Punjab Kings, if you are asking purely based on form and squad strength and recent record at this ground.
They have better momentum. They have no injury concerns. They have more batting depth. They have a spinner who absolutely loves bowling against this CSK lineup. And they have won here three times in a row already.
CSK’s best chance is if Gaikwad bats the way he can when he is in full flow. If Noor Ahmad makes the ball talk on a gripping surface. If the crowd gets fully behind the team and genuinely lifts them through the middle overs. CSK have beaten better teams than this on nights when everything clicked at Chepauk.
But right now, on paper and off it, Punjab Kings look the stronger side.
Our call: Punjab Kings win by somewhere between 15 and 25 runs if CSK bat first. Or with five wickets in hand if they chase.
Watch it live on Star Sports. Stream on JioHotstar. Toss at 7 PM, first ball at 7:30 PM tonight.
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
