“Well, you rightly said, tough pill to swallow,” Gaikwad, who scored an unbeaten 108 in the first innings, said. “But good game of cricket. LSG played really well in the back end. We had the game in control till the 13th-14th over but hats off to Stoinis. He played brilliantly.
“Dew played a part. I feel it was a slightly huge amount of dew and took our spinners away from the game. If there was no dew, we could’ve controlled the middle phase and taken the game deeper. It’s part of cricket. You really can’t change the non-controllables. Long way to go in the tournament.”
Dube walked in at No. 5 with CSK losing steam through the middle overs, but upped the team’s scoring rate with a 27-ball 66 that helped lift the hosts to 210 for 4. Before his arrival, Jadeja and Daryl Mitchell combined to score only 21 in 29 balls that had allowed LSG to keep CSK quiet from one end.
“Well, obviously Jaddu [Jadeja] is batting at No. 4 and we lost the second wicket in the powerplay. So he was the one to come at that stage,” Gaikwad said. “We have a pretty much clear process and clear thinking and that after the powerplay if wicket comes then he [Dube] will come. You cannot force yourself to get out and ask him to come in.”
Even though Dube had said at the halfway stage that CSK’s total was ten runs above par, Gaikwad said later that he felt the target of 211 was just about par.
“Batting first, we couldn’t have got more than that,” he said. “To be honest, I never thought it was enough, just about par with the kind of dew we’ve been having in the last few practice sessions. I knew it will go down to the last over but credit to them, they batted really well.”
After now suffering back-to-back defeats at the hands of Super Giants – and their third loss in their last five outings – CSK have slipped to fifth on the points table after eight games. LSG have climbed to fourth with their fifth win and sit on ten points.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo