Shikhar Dhawan's unbeaten century guided Delhi Capitals to a thrilling 5-wicket win over Chennai Super Kings in the ongoing IPL 2020 on Saturday (October 17). However, what caught more eyes was when the CSK skipper MS Dhoni gave Ravindra Jadeja to bowl the crucial final over when there were two left-handers at the crease.
With 17 runs to defend off 6 delivery, Jadeja's display in the final of the game was very poor as DC cruised home in the end with one ball to spare after the CSK allrounder conceded 22 runs off his five deliveries.
This caused a lot of outrage amongst fans as people started to question why was Jadeja given the last over to bowl instead of someone like Dwayne Bravo. However, after the match, Dhoni did provide a clarification behind this change in bowling.
"(Dwayne) Bravo was not fit. He went out and didn’t come back," MS Dhoni said during the post-match interview.
"The options were Jaddu (Ravindra Jadeja) and Karn (Sharma). I went with Jaddu," he added.
In chase of a target score of 180, DC got off to a terrible start after CSK pacer Deepak Chahar pulled off an efficient caught&bowled effort to remove Prithvi Shaw for a duck off the second ball of the chase.
With this early dismissal, Ajinkya Rahane walked out to formed a stand with opener Shikhar Dhawan in the middle. The duo played some good shots but only managed to add 26 runs before Rahane (8) was sent back to the dressing room after an excellent fielding display.
Skipper Shreyas Iyer then formed a brief stand for the third wicket. Iyer played a run-a-ball inning of 23 runs before he was sent back to the dressing room by Dwayne Bravo after Faf Du Plessis took an excellent catch on the boundary line.
Meanwhile, Shikhar Dhawan held the other end firmly for DC as Marcus Stoinis (24) and Alex Carey (9) got dismissed by Shardul Thakur and Sam Curran. However, Dhawan kept on going and his resistance paid off in the end as the DC opener bagged his maiden IPL century off 57 deliveries.
Going into the final over, DC needed 17 runs with Dhoni giving the ball to Ravindra Jadeja. In what first looked like a near-impossible task, Axar Patel made it look easy and guided DC to victory in style with a massive six with one ball remaining.
Dhawan (101*) and Patel (21*) remained unbeaten in the end as Delhi Capitals finished on 185/5
