England all-rounder Sam Curran made his debut for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in their opening game against Mumbai Indians in Abu Dhabi on Saturday. The left-hander impressed with both bat and the ball to help CSK beat Mumbai by five wickets and bring an end to their five-match losing streak against Rohit Sharma’s men. While Ambati Rayudu and Faf du Plessis were the heroes for CSK with the bat, Curran’s fiery cameo towards the end took the game away from Mumbai Indians.
After Rayudu’s departure on 121, Ravindra Jadeja walked in to bat with CSK requiring 42 runs off 24 balls. Jadeja scored 10 off 5 and was dismissed by Krunal Pandya in the 18th over. While many expected MS Dhoni to walk in and finish the game, the CSK skipper instead promoted Curran above him and the left-hander’s short cameo of 6-ball 18 put CSK in touching distance from the winning mark.
Curran said he himself was surprised to bat above Dhoni in the 163-run chase and called the CSK skipper a genius for his unpredicted move which sealed the deal for his team.
‘Very different. I have been used to the bubble with the England team. But you are used to seeing big crowds in IPL, so it was different. I haven’t met a lot of the guys, came in a day before, and was straight on the bus today. That was a good thing,” said Curran during the post-match presentation while talking about the bio-bubble in IPL 2020.
“I was very surprised that I went in. He (Dhoni) is a genius and thought something (about sending me before himself). We targeted that over (18th) and sometimes it comes off and sometimes it doesn’t,” he added praising Dhoni.
“To be honest, I was very surprised when Jadeja got out for me to go ahead of MS Dhoni. It was a big shock to me but the plan was obviously to go out there, have a go at them, if it comes off it comes off,” Curran later told iplt20.com talking after the game.
