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Chennai Super Kings v Kings XI Punjab, IPL, Chennai
Punjab aim for sixth straight win
May 9, 2008
Match facts
Saturday, May 10, 2008Start time 20.00 (local), 14.30 (GMT)
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The Big Picture
Chennai and Punjab clashed for the first time in the second match of the Indian Premier League and a century from Michael Hussey ensured that the match was a no-contest. Since then Punjab have hit a formidable run of form, and are on a five-match winning streak, while Chennai took a beating after their top performers left. Punjab's strength lies in their contingent of effective Indian bowlers - Irfan Pathan, Sreesanth, VRV Singh and Piyush Chawla - which allows them to pack their top order with quality international batsmen to complement Yuvraj Singh.Chennai suffered three consecutive defeats before they were able to fine-tune their combination after the departures of Matthew Hayden, Hussey and Jacob Oram and beat the Delhi Daredevils. They restructured their batting order: dropping Parthiv Patel, who had scored 96 in seven innings, and opening with S Vidyut. They also promoted their best batsmen - Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Albie Morkel - to No. 3 and No. 5 respectively with Suresh Raina at No 4. The changes gave Chennai's batting solidity at the top and the tinkering was vindicated as they chased down 188.
Tournament position
Chennai Super Kings P8, W5, L3, NRR -0.001Kings XI Punjab P7, W5, L2, NRR +0.442
IPL form (last five matches)
Chennai Super Kings: WLLLWKings XI Punjab: WWWWW
Watch out for ...
Team news
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Chennai made three changes to their line-up against Delhi: they left out Parthiv, Joginder Sharma and Makhaya Ntini and replaced them with medium-pacers Lakshmipathy Balaji, Palani Amarnath and Chamara Kapugedera, a Sri Lankan international flown in over the weekend as a late addition to the squad. They are not facing any fitness issues and are unlikely to change their combination unless the pitch forces it.
Chennai Super Kings: 1 S Vidyut, 2 Stephen Fleming, 3 Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt & wk), 4 Suresh Rania, 5 Albie Morkel, 6 Chamara Kapugedera, 7 S Badrinath, 8 Manpreet Gony, 9 Palani Amarnath, 10 Muttiah Muralitharan, 11 Lakshmipathy Balaji.
Kumar Sangakkara is still unfit and will not be able to play against Chennai. Yuvraj said that Sangakkara would need a week to recover which means that Punjab are likely to field the same international players: Marsh, James Hopes, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Mahela Jayawardene.
Kings XI Punjab: 1 Shaun Marsh, 2 James Hopes, 3 Ramnaresh Sarwan, 4 Yuvraj Singh (capt), 5 Mahela Jayawardene, 6 Irfan Pathan, 7 Piyush Chawla, 8 Uday Kaul (wk), 9 Gagandeep Singh, 10 Sreesanth, 11 VRV Singh.
Stats and trivia
Quotes
"It's all the in the past and how we play well tomorrow is what matters. Initially, we took time to get used to each other. After we lost the first two games, we sat down and assigned roles to each player and worked out a strategy. We have a fairly good combination now."
Yuvraj Singh, the Kings XI Punjab captain, on his team's run in the IPL so far.
George Binoy is a staff writer at Cricinfo
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Senior sub-editor After a major in Economics and nine months at a financial research firm, George realised that equity, capital and the like were not for him. He decided that he wanted to be one of those lucky few who do what they love at work. Alas, his prodigious talent was never spotted and he had to reconcile himself to the fact that he would never earn his money playing cricket for his country, state or even district. He jumped at the opportunity to work for Cricinfo and is now confident of mastering the art of office cricket.
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