IPL 2024: Pat Cummins Marvels at MS Dhoni’s Presence, CSK Legend Leaves Opponents in Awe

In the 18th match of the Indian Premier League 2024 (IPL 2024), Pat Cummins-led Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) hosted Ruturaj Gaekwad-led Chennai Super Kings (CSK) on Friday, April 5 at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad. In the match, Sunrisers Hyderabad won the toss and decided to bowl first. They missed the services of Mayank Agarwal, who was ill, and SRH brought in Nitish Reddy and T Natarajan. Chennai Super Kings, meanwhile, made three changes as Moeen Ali, Mahesh Thikshana and Mukesh Chaudhary returned to the squad as Mustafizur Rahman was unavailable and Matisha Pathirana was a niggle. Batting first, the CSK openers batted cautiously and were not able to give their team a good start. Rachin Ravindra flopped again and was dismissed for 12 by Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the 4th over. Ruturaj Gaekwad was also unable to return to form and was bowled out for 26 runs.

After that, Ajinkya Rahane and Shivam Dubey batted well, being ultra-aggressive. The duo added 65 runs together and did not allow SRH to take complete control of the match. In the end, Chennai posted 165/5 on the board. Chasing the target, Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma dismantled the CSK bowlers and laid the foundations for a dominant victory in the powerplay itself. At the end of 6 overs, SRH were at 78/1. Next came Aiden Markram who did a fantastic job in the middle. The Proteas star struck from time to time and brought up his half-century in 35 balls. Markram was not able to finish the match for his team, but SRH did not face any problems and Henrik Klaassen and Nitish Reddy did the rest for the team. SRH completed the run-chase in 18.1 overs and they won by 6 wickets.

Shivam was hitting it well against spin – Pat Cummins
At the post-match presentation ceremony, Pat Cummins said that the track for SRH vs CSK was quite different and slowed down as the match progressed. Pat Cummins also praised CSK batsman Shivam Dubey, who played aggressive cricket as usual and scored 45 runs. “Different ground. Slowed down a bit as the game progressed. Shivam was hitting well against the spin. Thought we’d take a chance with the off-cutter. First thing is always to score.” Pat Cummins also admitted that he would not prefer to bowl to his teammate Abhishek Sharma who batted with a strike rate of 308.33 against CSK. Pat Cummins signed off by talking about the crowd and he said that the crowd was very loud when MS Dhoni came out to bat. Pat Cummins said:

“I don’t want to bowl him (Abhishek) and Trav Head over the top. The crowd was crazy tonight. When MS walked out, it was as loud as I’ve ever heard.”

Former SRH skipper Aiden Markram also spoke at the post-match presentation ceremony and said that the batting conditions were not easy. He further labeled SRH as a team with a better batting unit than the bowling department. Aidan said: “Not too bad, not on par with what was against Mumbai, as the ball got softer and older, it wasn’t easy, we saw that when we bowled. When we batted, we wanted to attack in the first ten overs and wanted to take then. It’s from there. (Are you a batting team or a bowling team?) I’m not sure but I’ll go with batting.