The upcoming game, the 49th of the league stage, could witness MS Dhoni, back as the CSK captain after stepping down ahead of the season, achieve some personal milestones.
MS Dhoni is back as captain of Chennai Super Kings. Image: Sportzpics for IPL
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) will hope to make it one-all against the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in Indian Premier League (IPL) when they take on the ‘Yellow Army’ in the second leg of the ‘Cauvery Derby’ on Wednesday.
CSK had collected their first points of the season after four consecutive defeats with a 23-run win over RCB on 12 April, and the Faf du Plessis-led Royal Challengers will hope to avenge that loss in the match that takes place at the Maharashtra Cricket Stadium in Pune.
For Chennai, every remaining game in the league phase is a must-win as they find their playoff hopes hanging by a thread with just six points from nine outings. More importantly, they need to win by sizeable margins to improve their Net Run Rate, which currently stands at -0.407.
RCB had been in good form with five wins from seven games before hitting a roadblock of sorts, losing each of their last three fixtures. They, too, have a negative NRR (-0.558), thanks to the nine-wicket walloping at the hands of Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), in which they were bundled out for a meagre 68.
The upcoming game, the 49th of the league stage, could witness MS Dhoni, back as the CSK captain, achieve a personal milestone.
Here’s a detailed look at those milestones:
— The match against RCB will be Dhoni’s 200th for CSK, making him only the second player after Royal Challengers talisman Virat Kohli to make 200 appearances for a single franchise.
— Dhoni needs to score six more runs to complete 6,000 runs as captain in T20Is. Another club that Kohli is an exclusive member of at present.
— MSD has hit 46 sixes against RCB. Should he hit four more maximums on Wednesday, he’ll become the first Indian with 50 sixes against a single franchise.
Southern rivals CSK and RCB have faced each other in 30 matches. Four-time IPL champions Chennai have the clear upper hand in the head-to-head record with 20 wins and 9 defeats. One game ended in a no-result in the 2012 season.