It required a witch in the form of a re-laid pitch at Chepauk to throw wily spells and disturb what was our strong Chennai fortress. I am completely shell-shocked looking at the way we surrendered to T & T without giving a proper fight.
Just when I was thinking that we would really go hard at our opponents and take our game one level up, here we are again one level down and waiting for integrated calculus calculations to work our way for our team to get into the semis.
Funny isn't it? Welcome to Chennai blokes and let me introduce you all to my Team - Chennai Super Kings. Indeed, the loss yesterday is not going to take the credit away from my champion team, but what really hurts to fans like me is why did our team forget to give the push when most needed?
The other thing that bamboozles me is not because Chepauk wickets have been re-laid, but why are we playing matches and that too for a premier edition like CL-T20 on a new pitch like this that was not tested fully? No doubt, it is an excellent Test match wicket, but is it a good T20 match wicket is the million dollar question?
We could have either re-used the same pitch that we used for IPL and postponed the plan of relaying the wicket till CL-T20 was over. Overall, if we had planned to play one or two matches at Chepauk, it would not have been a cause of concern. We already knew much before that we would be playing 10 matches at Chepauk and I believe even our team CSK deserved a better pitch to make use of home conditions better. I am not complaining just because my team lost.
Chepauk to me has produced 90% of high voltage tightly contested matches in the past. I am not denying that fact. But my point is, T20 matches deserve to be played on wickets where there is good bounce, which means there is something in it to exploit both for the batsmens and bowlers. The way Dharmasala came in for appreciation in the way they prepared an excellent wicket during IPL is one prime example. We need wickets like that. I would also cite the pitch reason for drop in Chennai crowds too.
Our team is full of flamboyant players like Vijay, Raina, Dhoni, Morkel and Bravo who all like the ball to come on nicely to the bat so that they can think of clearing the ball out of Chepauk. Yes, we do have players who can do the grinding as well, players like Hussey and Badri. Our newly re-laid Chepauk wicket can serve as a good Test match wicket and will easily test the techniques of our flamboyant players in the Test Match version, but T20 is definitely not the platform to test their techniques.
Having said all this, what really matters now is that the pitch might have played a Witch, but we want our players to fix their Glitch and Switch back to winning mode. At least let us win our only game and look for something next to miracle to happen OR worse case scenario take our next victory as a consolation and move forward as they say "SUCCESS IS NEVER ENDING, FAILURE IS NEVER FINAL".