Mahendra Singh Dhoni will look to get his team off to a flying start in the tournament when Chennai Super Kings take on Royal Challengers Bangalore in the first match of the 12th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai on Saturday.
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Over the years, Chepauk has been Dhoni’s happy hunting ground and he has scored bucketloads of runs at this famous venue. Dhoni stands second on the list of most runs scored at this stadium in the IPL. Dhoni’s teammate and the highest run getter in IPL Suresh Raina takes the top spot.
To make matters worse for the visitors, Dhoni also enjoys a great record against RCB and he is the leading run-scorer against RCB in the cash-rich league. Dhoni’s 710 runs against RCB is better than the likes of Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma.
Dhoni will look to take inspiration from the last season where the came up with the goods with the bat and fire his team to their third IPL title. The CSK skipper scored 455 runs in 16 matches which is his second most runs in a season after 2013 where he scored 461 runs.
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Squads:
Chennai Super Kings: MS Dhoni (c), Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, Harbhajan Singh, Shane Watson, Dwayne Bravo, Murali Vijay, Karn Sharma, Kedar Jadhav, Ambati Rayudu, David Willey, Imran Tahir, Faf du Plessis, Deepak Chahar, Sam Billings, Mohit Sharma, Shardul Thakur, Dhruv Shorey, Monu Kumar, Mitchell Santner, Chaitanya Bishnoi, N Jagadeesan, Ruturaj Gaikwad, KM Asif
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli (c), Umesh Yadav, Parthiv Patel, AB de Villiers, Tim Southee, Moeen Ali, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Yuzvendra Chahal, Colin de Grandhomme, Pawan Negi, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Akshdeep Nath, Milind Kumar, Marcus Stoinis, Navdeep Saini, Shimron Hetmyer, Heinrich Klaasen, Himmat Singh, Mohammed Siraj, Washington Sundar, Shivam Dube, Kulwant Khejroliya, Devdutt Padikkal, Prayas Barman
First Published:
Mar 21, 2019 17:48 IST
Source: HindustanTimes