Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Monday said that the Chennai Super Kings have not lived up to their billing this Indian Premier League season after the three-time winners were outclassed by the Rajasthan Royals.
Chennai skipper Dhoni’s 200th match in the Twenty20 tournament turned out to be a damp squib as his team lost by seven wickets in Abu Dhabi to slip to the bottom of the eight-team table.
Jos Buttler’s unbeaten 70 and disciplined bowling helped Steve Smith’s Royals dominate the game after being asked to field first.
“It’s fair enough, this season we weren’t there,” a disappointed Dhoni said after Chennai’s seventh loss from 10 matches. “Also there were few chances to the youngsters and maybe we didn’t see the kind of spark that they could have given us to say OK, to push [out] the experienced guys and maybe make space for them [the youngsters].”
Dhoni, 39, said that his team, dubbed “Dad’s Army” by the media, would give the youngsters a chance in the remaining games of the season as Chennai still have an outside chance to progress to the playoffs.
“Today the result, what it really does is give those guys [the youngsters], whatever is left in our league stage, a chance and they play without pressure,” the veteran wicketkeeper-batsman said.
Jofra Archer led the Royals bowling attack with figures of 1-20 to restrict Chennai to 125-5, a total the Royals surpassed with 2.3 overs to spare to move up to fifth place.
Buttler, who came to bat at No. 5 rather than his usual opening slot, put on an unbeaten 98-run stand with skipper Smith, who made 26, after the Royals lost three early wickets.
“I thought we bowled pretty well in the power play, and the spinners did a good job in the middle with their leggies and googlies, and squeezing,” Smith said.
“Shreyas [Gopal the] last two years has been sensational for us and [Rahul] Tewatia this year, whether batting, bowling or fielding, has done the job. Buttler’s innings took the pressure off me at the other end,” he said.
Gopal and Tewatia were miserly in their eight overs, giving away just 32 runs and taking one wicket each.
Chennai’s top-order failed to fire, with Dhoni’s run-a-ball 28 and an unbeaten 35 from Ravindra Jadeja giving the total some respectability.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier