Hayden sets up Chennai triumph
Chennai Super Kings moved to the top of the Indian Premier League table with a 12-run win over Kings XI Punjab in a rain-reduced match at Centurion.
Matthew Hayden, the tournament’s leading run-scorer, again fired for the Super Kings, clattering six sixes on his way to 89 off 58 balls as they posted their highest score of the tournament - 185 for three from their revised 18 overs.
Sloppy fielding and dropped catches undermined Chennai’s defence of that total, and Simon Katich hit a breezy 50 before Yuvraj Singh and Mahela Jayawardene rode their luck during an unbroken 90-run stand which maintained their victory hopes.
Needing 30 from the final two overs, and with Yuvraj in full flight, Punjab were well placed to win, but a superb penultimate over from Suresh Raina costing just six runs blunted their charge and saw Chennai knock Rajasthan off top spot.
Punjab’s reply had been immediately set back when Sunny Sohal was bowled second ball of the innings by Albie Morkel, while Karan Goel took 20 balls for his 14 as a laboured start threatened their chase.
Katich upped the tempo in emphatic style when he plundered three sixes off Manpreet Gony.
Matthew Hayden's brutal 89, which spanned 58 balls and contained eight fours and six sixes, proved decisive
The Australian reached his fifty from just 24 balls, including four sixes, but he was out next ball when he cut Lakshmipathy Balaji to Shadab Jakati at deep point.
That brought Yuvraj and Jayawardene together, needing more than 12 an over entering the second half of the innings.
Yuvraj was at his explosive best, at one stage hitting Morkel out of the ground, and, while the Super Kings did not help their own cause in the field, Raina’s intervention proved decisive.
Earlier, Raina and Hayden helped Chennai recover from the loss of Badrinath to the first ball of the innings to reach 68 for one after 7.3 overs.
Rain then forced the players off and, while a break of almost two hours followed, the game was only reduced to 18 overs each with the strategic breaks done away with.
The delay had seemingly aided the Kings XI when Piyush Chawla removed Raina, caught by Goel at deep midwicket for 32, soon after the resumption.
However, Dhoni and Hayden put the Punjab bowlers to the sword in a 100-run stand which occupied just 47 balls.
Hayden smashed Chawla for two sixes in the 14th over before his partner replicated the feat in the next. That VRV Singh over cost 24, but Hayden was not to be outdone.
The former Australia opener cleared the leg-side fence from three of the first four balls of a Sri Sreesanth over.
Hayden perished within sight of a century when he found Jayawardene at long-on, Sreesanth’s send-off an ill-advised sidebar.
Dhoni finished unbeaten on 56 from 27 balls, an innings which included seven fours and two sixes.
