By Prakash Nair 
Ahmedabad, May 21: Chennai are done. Not officially, not on paper, but in that way you just know.
CSK vs GT Tonight they come to Ahmedabad, to the biggest cricket stadium in the world, to face the one team that already beat them like they were a club side less than a month ago. They need to win. Then they need other teams to lose. Then a few more stars need to align. You know how these things usually end.
Gujarat Titans are not going to make it easy. They already have one foot in the playoffs but they want more. A win tonight could get them into the top two, which basically means an extra life in the knockout stage. So they are not here to hand out charity. They want this too.
Two teams, completely different reasons for showing up. That is actually what makes it worth watching.
The Last Time These Two Played, CSK Got Hammered
April 26. Chepauk. CSK’s own backyard. They still lost by eight wickets.
Kagiso Rabada came out in the first over and started bowling like he had a personal grudge against every Chennai batter. By the time the fourth over was done, CSK were 26 for 3. Sanju Samson gone. Urvil Patel gone. Sarfaraz Khan gone. Three wickets, four overs, game basically over before it started.
Ruturaj Gaikwad stuck around and made 74. Respect to him for that. But it took him 60 balls, and in T20 cricket, a captain batting slow while wickets fall around him is not a rescue mission. It is just damage control. CSK ended on 158 for 7.
Gujarat knocked those runs off in 16.4 overs. Sai Sudharsan hit 87 off 46 balls and made it look like a Sunday afternoon knock in the nets. Seven sixes. He was not under any pressure whatsoever. Jos Buttler was just there alongside him, steady, unbothered.
The really stinging part? GT reached their hundred faster than CSK reached their fifty. In the same match. That is how one-sided it was.
Tonight is a rematch of that. At GT’s home ground. With the same bowling attack. On a surface that does even more for pace bowlers than Chepauk did.
GT Just Lost, But Do Not Read Too Much Into It
Five wins in a row, then Eden Gardens on May 16, and suddenly everyone wanted to write GT off.
Kolkata Knight Riders posted 247 for 2. Finn Allen made 93 off 35 balls, which is essentially video game numbers. Angkrish Raghuvanshi got 82. Cameron Green got 52. That is three batters going absolutely berserk on a flat pitch that had nothing in it for bowlers. Rashid Khan went for 57 in four overs without taking a wicket. His worst figures of the season.
GT scored 218 in reply and still lost by 29 runs. On that kind of track, against that kind of batting display, most bowling attacks would have gone for similar.
Here is the thing though. Eden Gardens that night was a road. Flat, quick outfield, dew, the works. The Narendra Modi Stadium tonight is different. The pitch here has gotten harder and bouncier as the tournament has gone on. That suits Rabada and Mohammed Siraj far more than it suits CSK’s top order. Rashid at home is also a different animal from Rashid at Eden Gardens on a batting paradise.
GT’s loss against KKR is one of those results that looks worse than it was.
CSK’s Last Game Was Painful to Watch
Monday at Chepauk. Their last home game of the season. They needed a result desperately.
They posted 180 for 7 batting first, lost Samson early for 27, and then watched Ishan Kishan dismantle their bowling attack with what looked like minimal effort. Kishan made 70 off 47. Heinrich Klaasen did the damage in the middle. CSK got Kishan in the end but by then SRH basically needed six runs with ten balls left, and two lower-order batters knocked them off without drama.
Five wickets. Six balls to spare. SRH qualified for the playoffs that night. CSK’s season started flashing red lights.
Word has it MS Dhoni has gone back home to Ranchi. He will come back only if CSK make the playoffs. That one detail right there tells you everything about the vibe inside that dressing room right now.
CSK are sitting seventh. Six wins, seven losses. They are not a disaster of a team. They just never really got going this season, and now the bill has come due on the last night of the league stage.
Fitness News: One Thing to Watch Before Toss
Sai Sudharsan got hit on the elbow in a recent game. He batted through the pain and made runs, which says a lot about him as a cricketer. But heading into tonight, his availability is not fully confirmed. GT will announce the final XI at 6:30 PM IST, and that is the moment to watch.
If Sudharsan plays, GT bat deep. If he sits out, there is a gap in their lineup that needs covering. For a team chasing a top-two finish, that is a significant call to make.
Everyone else in GT’s squad looks fine. Gill fit and captaining. Rabada, Siraj, Rashid all expected to play.
The Toss Could Change Everything
Here is a bit of ground reality about the Narendra Modi Stadium at night. As the evening goes on, dew settles on the pitch and outfield. That makes the ball harder to grip for bowlers and easier to hit for batters. The team chasing generally benefits from this.
So if CSK win the toss and bowl first, they make GT bat in the harder conditions and then chase with the dew helping them. That is their best chance of flipping the script.
If GT bat first and put up 185 to 200 on that surface, and then Rabada and Siraj are steaming in during the powerplay against Samson and Gaikwad in seaming conditions? CSK have already been 26 for 3 in that exact situation four weeks ago. The body remembers.
Who Actually Wins This for CSK If They Are Going to Win It
Sanju Samson. Full stop.
When Samson is in that mood, the kind where he is walking to the pitch and you can see it in his body language, he makes fast bowling attacks look ordinary. He has 293 runs across all his innings against GT in IPL history. He hits hard in the powerplay, which is exactly what CSK need because Gaikwad’s powerplay strike rate this season is the lowest among all regular openers in the competition. One of their openers plays cautiously. The other one needs to go after it from ball one.
If Samson gets 20 balls and goes hard, CSK have a platform. If Rabada gets him in over three, the innings is already half broken.
Ruturaj Gaikwad will bat long and hold the innings together. That is his job. But CSK need fireworks around him, not just from him.
For GT, the story writes itself. Back Rabada in the powerplay. Let Rashid control the middle. Trust Sudharsan and Buttler with the bat if GT are chasing. They have won multiple games this season playing exactly that template.
Read the Room
Gujarat Titans are the better team right now. Better form, better conditions, better bowling attack for this kind of surface, and they already know exactly how to beat this CSK side because they did it a month ago on a pitch that was supposed to favour Chennai.
Anshul Kamboj has been CSK’s best bowler this season but he has gone for runs in his last few outings. Noor Ahmad is dangerous but can be targeted. The bowling unit is thin because injuries have hit CSK hard across the season. That is not an excuse, just context.
CSK can win this. Stranger things have happened in the IPL. A Samson blitz, a Gaikwad special, a Noor Ahmad five-over spell that strangles GT’s middle order. It is all possible. T20 cricket is designed for upsets.
But if you are watching tonight without any team loyalty and someone asks you who the smart money is on, you already know the answer.
Gujarat Titans are at home. They are fresh. They are motivated. Their best bowler made this CSK batting lineup look completely clueless four weeks ago. And the man who batted them down that day, Sai Sudharsan, is probably going to play despite the elbow because nothing about this GT squad suggests they leave their best players out of knockout-adjacent games.
CSK need a miracle. Not an impossible one. But a miracle nonetheless.
And Dhoni is sitting in Ranchi waiting for a phone call that may or may not come.
That is where we are.
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
