By Prakash Nair 
Lucknow, May 15: CSK needed a win tonight. They did not get one.
Lucknow Super Giants beat them by 7 wickets with 20 balls still left in the match. Chennai needed this. They really, really needed this. And they lost it in a manner that will sting for days not because they were unlucky, not because the umpires got something wrong, but because a young bowler nobody was talking about this morning took three wickets in the powerplay and then Mitchell Marsh came out and hit the ball so hard and so consistently that the game was essentially over by the time most people had finished their dinner.
That is what happened tonight at the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow. LSG 188 for 3 in 16.4 overs. CSK 187 for 5 in their 20. The scoreline tells you the result. What it does not tell you is how one-sided the whole thing felt once it got going.
Akash Singh Walked in With a Piece of Paper and Took CSK Apart
Nobody outside the LSG camp was talking about Akash Singh before tonight. He was not in LSG’s playing XI for the first half of the match. He was not a name you would see trending on social media before the toss.
By the end of the powerplay, he had taken three wickets and CSK were 52 for 3 and the game was, in all honesty, already heading in one direction.
He bowled short. He bowled at the body. He targeted the ribs and the gloves and the instinctive pull shot that T20 batters can never quite resist. Ruturaj Gaikwad went first 13 runs off 9 balls, which is fine, except CSK needed their captain to bat for fifteen overs tonight, not four. Then Sanju Samson. Twenty runs off 20 balls. Samson. The man who has scored 424 runs this season and averaging over 60. Gone for 20. That was the moment the match changed.
Then Urvil Patel. Six runs off seven balls. The same Urvil Patel who smashed eight sixes in a 13-ball fifty against these same LSG bowlers at Chepauk just five days ago. Six runs tonight.
After every wicket, Akash pulled out a small note from his pocket and read it. His own little motivation card, some kind of personal thing he clearly does. The Ekana crowd loved it. The CSK dressing room probably less so. Four overs. Twenty-six runs. Three wickets. Best figures of his IPL career, on the night it mattered.
Kartik Sharma Tried. He Really Did.
The reason CSK even got to 187 is Kartik Sharma, and that deserves to be said clearly.
When three of your top four are back in the pavilion before the eighth over is done, most teams post 140 and go home quietly. Kartik walked out to a mess and turned it into something workable. His fifty off 35 balls was proper batting not slogging, not luck, proper cricket shots played at the right time against a good bowling attack. Coach Fleming was on his feet in the dugout when he reached the milestone.
Dewald Brevis had a cameo. Hit a lovely no-look six at one point, the kind of shot that makes you think he is about to take the game away from LSG, then Shami got him for 43 off 28 balls and the moment passed.
Shivam Dube came in late and did what Shivam Dube does 32 off 16 balls, two sixes in the final over, kept the scoreboard ticking. Prashant Veer hit 13 not out off 10. Together they added 45 runs for the sixth wicket without getting out and dragged CSK to 187.
On another surface, 187 might have been enough. On another night, against a team with something to play for, maybe it holds. Tonight, against Mitchell Marsh with dew on the ball and 20 overs to bat, it was not close.
Then Mitchell Marsh Happened
There is not a great deal to analyse here. Mitchell Marsh came out to bat and he hit the ball extremely hard in all directions for 38 balls and scored 90 runs and was only dismissed because of a freak run out that nobody planned. That is largely the whole story.
He pulled Kamboj for four in the third over like he was playing a net session. He hit Johnson over cover. He hit Noor Ahmed down the ground. When CSK tried yorkers he dug them out. When they tried the short ball he pulled them. When they tried to bowl wide outside off he drove them anyway. Ekana was going absolutely berserk with every boundary.
Josh Inglis came in as LSG’s Impact Player for the chase he had not batted in the first half of the game and the two of them put on 135 for the first wicket. One hundred and thirty-five. The target was 188. You can do that maths yourself.
CSK finally got both of them in the same over from Mukesh Choudhary in the 17th. Inglis hit a slower ball straight to sweeper cover. Then Marsh was run out for 90 Pooran hit it straight back, the ball hit Mukesh’s hand, deflected into the stumps, and Marsh was short of his ground. He stood there for a moment like he could not quite believe it either. Ninety runs. Run out. That was the only way he was leaving tonight.
Nicholas Pooran then hit 32 off 17 balls as if to make absolutely sure there were no nerves, and Mukul Choudhary knocked off the remaining runs. LSG were done in 16.4 overs. Seven wickets. Twenty balls to spare.
What the Dew Did and Why It Mattered
Before the match everyone said the toss would matter because of dew. Pant won the toss. CSK batted first. In the second innings the ball got wet, the grip got difficult, and LSG’s batters played on what felt like a completely different surface to the one CSK had faced.
This happens at Ekana. It has been documented all season. The evening dew at this ground genuinely changes the game in the second innings bowlers cannot hold the ball properly, slower deliveries do not grip, and batters can swing freely without worrying too much about the ball doing anything off the pitch. That is exactly what happened tonight.
CSK went in without Overton, who would have been their best bet to manage the back end of an innings in these conditions. Spencer Johnson was playing his first game for CSK, working back from a back injury. Kamboj was trying everything but Marsh was just too good. There is only so much a bowling attack can do when the pitch gives them nothing and the batter on the other end is in that kind of touch.
The Bigger Picture Is Uncomfortable
Two matches left for CSK in the league stage. They needed to win tonight to stay in genuine control of their own playoff fate. They did not win. Now they need to win both remaining games and then pray that results elsewhere go their way.
The teams around them SunRisers Hyderabad, Rajasthan Royals, Punjab Kings will sleep much better tonight than anyone in the CSK squad will.
The Samson dismissal is the one that will keep Ruturaj Gaikwad up at night. Twenty runs off 20 balls. In a must-win game. On a night when CSK desperately needed him to play a Samson innings one of those 70-off-35, anchor-then-accelerate innings that he has been producing all season. He did not get going and CSK never recovered from it.
This is not the end of their season. Mathematically they are still alive. But losing a game this significant, in this manner, to a team that had already been eliminated and had nothing to play for that is the kind of result that players remember. The kind that follows a franchise into the off-season.
LSG, meanwhile, gave their home crowd exactly what they had been waiting all season for. Marsh’s 90 was brutal and brilliant. Akash Singh’s three-for was the kind of debut performance that sticks. Pant won the toss, made the right call, and for one evening his leadership looked exactly as sharp as the money LSG spent on him suggested it should.
Two games left. CSK need two wins and some luck. It is not impossible. It just got a lot harder.
Result: LSG won by 7 wickets (with 20 balls remaining) CSK: 187/5 (20 overs) LSG: 188/3 (16.4 overs)
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
