Picture Credit: Twitter
Former India captain MS Dhoni is undoubtedly one of the sports' greatest icons. While he has already announced his retirement from international cricket, he continues to play for his Indian Premier League franchise Chennai Super Kings and has yet again managed to lead them to a Playoffs berth this year.
Chennai guaranteed themselves a place in the final four by registering a win over SunRisers Hyderabad on Thursday. The victory also confirmed the Orange Army's exit from the race to the final four. Yet it was SRH star Rashid Khan who received a special CSK jersey from Dhoni at the conclusion of the match.
The picture of the Afghanistan star talking to MSD with a CSK jersey in his hand is doing the rounds on the internet.
Check it out here:
Talking about the match, Dhoni won the toss and opted to field first at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium against Hyderabad. They then removed their key players Jason Roy and Kane Williamson early and following that it was a struggle for the Orange Army. With a few cameos from their young players and a 44 from Wriddhiman Saha, Hyderabad eventually finished with 134/7.
In response, the Chennai openers set them up beautifully for a win. While Ruturaj Gaikwad scored 45 from 38, Faf du Plessis also chipped in with 41 from 36. Together the openers put on 75 runs in the first 10 overs to ease the pressure of the middle order. In the second half of the Chennai innings, there was a bit of a wobble and they lost a few wickets.
However, experienced MS Dhoni and Ambatai Rayudu scored 13 runs from Bhuvneshwar Kumar's 19th over to ease the pressure big time. The Men in Yellow had got to a position where they needed 16 runs from the last 2 overs and it could have turned out to be a tricky situation had Bhuvi bowled a tight penultimate over but that wasn't to be as Rayudu scored a massive six and Dhoni also found the boundary to make it 3 needed from the final 6.
Later in the final over, Dhoni again took it a bit deep, in his own characteristic style, before he finished it with a huge six and helped Chennai became the first team to enter Playoffs in IPL 2021.