Ahead of the game, there was a lot of buzz about the top order woes of the Chennai Super Kings. Many complained of the CSK top order not playing upto the mark. But today, when the team faced the Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Chepauk Stadium, things were quite different. Shane Watson fired 96 runs from 53 balls and silenced the critics. After winning the toss, the home team opted to bowl first. Jonny Bairstow made his way back to the pavilion quite early in the game. Then, it was David Warner and Manish Pandey who stabilized Sunrisers Hyderabad and put up the partnership of 114 runs. But Warner after scoring a fifty made his way back. Manish Pandey then built a 47 run long partnership with Vijay Shankar. Manish Pandey scored 83 runs from 49 balls and thus the team reached a total of 175 runs. CSK beat SRH by 6 wickets.

The Chennai Super Kings had a shaky start as they could not get a single run from the first 10 balls of the game. They also lost Faf du Plessis on the score of 1. But then Shane Watson broke free and was all blazing guns by hitting all over the park. He even went on to beat the world-class spinner Rashid Khan and SRH pacer Sandeep Sharma. Watson made way to the pavilion on the score of 96 when the team was cruising to victory.  The team achieved the total with one run to spare.

Let’s have a look at some stats of the match:

# David Warner scored his seventh fifty of IPL 2019.

# Manish Pandey made his first fifty of IPL 2019.

# Shane Watson scored his first fifty of IPL 12.

Shane Watson was adjudged the Man of the Match for his innings. With this victory, Chennai Super Kings reclaimed the number one position on the IPL 2019 points table and the team has virtually qualified for the playoffs.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 24, 2019 12:48 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).