TNPL 2018: Karaikudi Kalaai Rout Chepauk Super Gillies in Chennai

Chepauk Super Gillies, who are the defending champions of the Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL) has had faced heat at the moment while chasing the target for the third time in the ongoing coveted tournament.

Surprisingly, they lost all the three times when they were asked to chase. The Super Gillies lost to Karaikudi Kalaai by 47 runs at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.

A captain’s knock:

The skipper of Kalaai, Anirudha Srikkanth once again led his team from the front. He played a captain’s knock of 56 off 28 balls to set a good base.

Maan Bafna once again supported him as he scored 31 off 28 balls. An excellent cameo at the later stage from M Shahjahan helped the TNPL franchise Kalaai to put a competitive total of 194 runs on the board. Shahjahan scored 43 off 20 balls.

Chase from Super Gillies:

The Super Gillies did not find any ease by chasing for the third time in the season third. They went on to lose their opener on duck in the form of Ganga Sridhar Raju.

Apart from skipper KH Gopinath and Murgun Ashwin, no other batsman looked threat for Kalaai in the league game. They were only able to achieve a total of 146 for the loss of six wickets.

Who said what:

“Everything went wrong, and I guess we were not up to the mark during crucial moments. We dropped a few catches, bowled too many wides, and I think that is why we ended up conceding more than 190. Vital to building partnerships, but it is critical to keep pushing, and I guess we lacked that momentum.” – Gopinath, the losing skipper said.

“I look to go hard in the powerplay as I know they don’t have too many good fast bowlers. It’s okay (the hammy), and I’ll go for scans tomorrow and hopefully it’ll be okay. The way our bowlers started was great, and that’s the platform we needed. We began preparing early as compared to the previous seasons, and that helped in executing our plans better.” – Srikkanth Anirudha, skipper added.