Chennai Super Kings cruised to a comfortable eight-wicket victory over an out-of-sorts Royal Challengers Bangalore but failed to retain second spot in the points table here on Saturday.
Chasing a modest target of 154 set by RCB largely due to Virat Kohli’s 49-ball-73, the CSK batsmen made minimum fuss as a collective effort saw them cross the line with as many as 14 balls to spare.CSK thus finished their league engagements with 18 points from 14 games by virtue of nine victories. Their net run-rate is +0.385 which they hoped that KKR did not surpass during their evening match against Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Faf du Plessis revelled in the role of an opener scoring an unbeaten 54 and also enjoying couple of fruitful partnerships of 57 for the opening stand with Dwayne Smith (34) and an unbroken 75 runs with skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni for the third wicket.Dhoni, who is always in his element in the cash-rich league, smacked his way to 49 off only 28 balls to ensure that the run-rate is suitably beefed up. Dhoni’s innings had four boundaries and three sixes while Du Plessis hit three fours and three sixes.
Brief Scores: RCB: 154/6 in 20 overs (Virat Kohli 73, Yuvraj Singh 25; Ashish Nehra 3/33) lost to CSK: 160/2 in 17.4 overs (Faf du Plessis 54, Mahendra Singh Dhoni 49*) by 8 wickets. PTI