Published 00:02 IST, September 20th 2020
Dream11 IPL 2020: MS Dhoni says 'plenty of areas to improve' after 5-wicket win vs Mumbai
Registering the tournament's first victory, Chennai defeated arch-rivals and defending champions Mumbai Indians by 5 wickets.
Registering the tournament's first victory, Chennai defeated arch-rivals and defending champions Mumbai Indians by 5 wickets. Despite scalping two early wickets, Mumbai failed to capitalize as Faf du Plessis and Ambati Rayadu anchored the Chennai innings. Winning skipper MS Dhoni congratulated the duo for their partnership terming Rayadu's innings as 'brilliant.' Rayadu was also awarded the Player of the Match for his innings of 72 runs off 48 deliveries.
At the post-match presentation, MS Dhoni said, "We may practice enough but when you go on the field you need to assess the conditions and give it your best. It took us time for the bowlers to find the right length on this pitch. Plenty of positives but still plenty of areas for us to improve. In the second half, there is a bit of movement till the dew sets in. If you don't lose wickets, you have the upper hand. These are the learnings."
"One thing we haven't done is giving a chance to Jadeja and Curran to come up the order and express themselves which is what we did today. It was a psychological thing of saying that okay, we have batsmen down, so we'll send one or two of them up to hit a few. It is an amazing job done by the Dream11 IPL 2020, especially ones behind the scenes."
Speaking of the squad's first outing, skipper Rohit Sharma remarked that the squad was 10-15 runs short against Chennai. Sharma highlighted that none of the Mumbai batsmen got going after getting a start. "None of our batsmen carried on for us, like du Plessis and Rayudu did for CSK. I think we were 85 in the first 10 overs. Credit to the CSK bowlers, they bowled well at the end to pull back things. Something for us to learn. Still early days. We all want to start really well, it's crucial in this tournament where momentum is important. Few things for us to learn from this game, we did make few mistakes," the Mumbai skipper said.
Sam Curran, who played a small but important cameo towards the end, felt a bit different with crowds being absent from the Dream11 IPL 2020. Speaking about him coming on to bat before Dhoni, Curran said, " That was a good thing. I was very surprised that I went in. He (Dhoni) is a genius and thought something (about sending me before himself). We targeted that over (18th) and sometimes it comes off and sometimes it doesn't."
Updated 09:58 IST, September 20th 2020