A brilliant team effort saw Chennai Super Kings beat Pune Warriors by 13 runs at home.
Chennai Super Kings rode on a half century each from Subramaniam Badrinath and Faf du Plessis and a disciplined show from their bowlers as they beat Pune Warriors by 13 runs in their Indian Premier League match here on Thursday.
Badrinath (57) and du Plessis (58) shared IPL five's highest opening stand of 116 runs from 15.3 overs to help Chennai raise 164 for five before they restricted Pune to 151 for seven on a MA Chidambaram Stadium pitch which became more difficult for batting as the match wore on.
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Chasing 165 for a win, Pune lost wickets at regular intervals but Steven Smith (23) and Angelo Mathews (27) kept them in the hunt only to lose the plot towards the end.
Pune needed 25 runs from the last two overs with five wickets in hand but once Smith was out in the second ball of the penultimate over bowled by Doug Bollinger, it was all over for the visiting side.
They needed 21 from the final over and Dwayne Bravo clean-bowled Mathews on the first ball to seal the issue for Chennai who took the revenge for their loss against the same opponents in Pune on April 14.
CSK openers S Badrinatha and Faf du Plessis both scored half-centuries. Pic/AFP
With the win, Chennai jumped to fifth position with six points from six matches. Pune also have six points from six matches and they are at fourth just above Chennai on better net run rate.
For Chennai, Nuwan Kulasekara took two wickets for 10 runs while Dwayne Barvo chipped in with two for 28.
Pune began their run chase promisingly with Robin Uthappa (8) and Jesse Ryder (9) hitting a four each in the opening over bowled by Doug Bollinger.
Uthappa smashed another four in the next over bowled by Nuwan Kulasekara but the bowler had the last laugh as the batsman fell while going for another big hit, only to lob the ball to mid-off for R Ashwin to take a fine catch.
Pune found themselves on the backfoot early on as Ryder was out for nine in the fourth over off Kulasekara as the visitors slumped to 26 for two. Ryder went for the pull and Bravo dived full length to take the catch.
The visiting side reached their fifty in the sixth over with captain Sourav Ganguly hitting two consecutive fours off Bollinger who gave away 18 runs in the over.
However, Pune were again halted when Manish Pandey (13) unnecessarily went for a big hit off Bravo only to find the ball balloon up for Badrinath to take a running catch.u00a0
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