TheSportsCampus

Match 34, pitting the Big daddies of the IPL promised to be a thrill-a-minute roller-coaster ride. The Royal Challengers itching for payback for their morale sapping last ball defeat at Chennai in the first leg welcomed the Super Kings to the garden city amidst dreary weather conditions. Following a one hour delay due to a drenched outfield caused by an evening drizzle, the jam packed Chinnaswamy stadium burst to life at the toss. Young Virat Kohli, skippering the side in the absence of an injured Dan Vettori won the toss and elected to bowl first on a fine batting track, feeling that Bangalore were better off chasing. Whilst Andrew McDonald filled up the fourth foreigner's spot for the hosts, Chennai made a couple of changes with the returning Albie Morkel replacing Doug Bollinger and Vijaykumar Yo Mahesh coming in for Shadab Jakati. Morkel, who flew back to South Africa to attend the last rites of his good friend missed CSK's last two games.

Just before the game was scheduled to commence, the rain returned, postponing the scheduled start past 10pm. Overs were certain to be lost, with an 11:20 cut-off time for a 5 over a side game.

As the minutes kept ticking away and the showers picked up pace it was becoming quite evident that the prospect of having a match today were increasingly unlikely, and when the appointed hour neared, the umpires decided to call it a day.

A second consecutive day when the 8pm match gets washed out has threatened to put a dampener on the IPL, more so because a match which promised real thrills had to be called off. The fans for both these powerpacked teams will hope that they are given one more opportunity to see the sides collide, in the knock-out stages of the competition. Interestingly, the result moves both sides to 9 points, level with the Kolkata Knight Riders, who also saw their game against the Deccan Chargers washed out yesterday.

The Chennai Super Kings will now head home to square off against the Kings XI Punjab in an early kick-off on Saturday, April 28th. Meanwhile, the Royal Challengers will take on Kolkata on the same day at the Eden Gardens, and will hope that the weather improves in Kolkata by the time they reach there.

Teams:

RCB: C Gayle, M Aggarwal, T Dilshan, V Kohli(c), AB de Villiers(wk), S Tiwary, A McDonald, H Patel, Z Khan, V Kumar, KP Appana

CSK: F du Plessis, S Badrinath, S Raina, MS Dhoni(c/wk), D Bravo, R Jadeja, W Saha, A Morkel, N Kulasekara, R Ashwin, V Yo Mahesh