Nervous Captain to Non penetrative bowling: Three reasons why Chennai lost

As Kolkata won the opening clash of the Indian T20 League 2022 easily, we try to find out what went wrong for Chennai in the match. The opening clash at the Wankhede turned out to be pretty anticlimactic. While there was a lot of hype surrounding the opening match, the competition did not at all match the expectations.

Here are three mistakes that Chennai committed leading them to surrender before Kolkata so easily in the first match.

1.56 Dot balls while batting: In a T20 Match a dot ball is like gold dust for the bowling team. So, Chennai playing 56 deliveries while batting was like giving away a treasure chest to Kolkata. The batters of Chennai failed to gauge the pitch. None of the batters looked to rotate the strike and only went for boundary shots from the very beginning. These led to the consistent loss of wickets and a considerable number of dot balls. Thus, they lost their way and ended up with just 131 runs in their 20 overs.

2.Jadeja’s scratchy knock: The new skipper of the Chennai team scored just 26 runs from 28 deliveries. When the fans expected him to give a strong and explosive finish he was struggling in the middle. It looked like Jadeja was under pressure with the added responsibility. He thus ended up playing many dot balls in the crucial stage of the game and slowing Chennai’s progress.

3.No wickets in the powerplays: Chennai really missed Deepak Chahar at the start of their bowling innings. Chahar has 42 wickets in the power plays and Chennai needed a few today. The Chennai bowlers could not pick up a wicket in the first 6 overs and thus Kolkata was able to lay a solid foundation. That led Kolkata to win the match pretty easily in the end.