As Ravindra Jadeja, Chennai Super Kings’ slow left-arm orthodox spinner, came down to bowl the final over in Delhi Capitals’ chase, there was a lot of questions surrounding that move. Twitter was set on fire as Jadeja, and not Dwayne Bravo, bowled the final over for Chennai Super Kings in Sharjah. With 17 required off the last ball, finger spinner Jadeja came in and was blasted for 22 runs, including 3 sixes by Axar Patel, in 5 deliveries and the game was over with a ball remaining as DC won by 5 wickets.
The real reason behind not giving the last over to death-specialist Bravo is that the pacer was away due to o groin injury, according to coach Stephen Fleming, that could keep him out for up to 2 weeks.
“He (Bravo) seems to have a right groin injury, obviously it was serious enough to keep him from coming back to the field, he is just really disappointed that he was not able to bowl the final over, that’s pretty much for what he is in the team for. He would have to be reassessed going forward, at this stage, you would imagine that it would take a few days or a couple of weeks,” Fleming said.
“Unfortunately Dwayne Bravo got injured so he could not bowl the last over, naturally he is a death bowler, that’s the way our season has been going, we are having challenges thrown at us. Jadeja was not planned to bowl at the death, but with Bravo getting injured, we did not have any other option. We did well to create a situation where it could have worked for us but we have to keep working hard and turn it around,” Fleming said at the post-match press conference.
Fleming did praise Shikhar Dhawan for his unbeaten 58-ball 101, the opener’s first IPL hundred, but also pointed at the dropped catches by CSK.
“Well, we gave Shikhar Dhawan a few lives, he was playing well, we had opportunities to take his wicket early but we did not take them. He was playing aggressively and he was staying right up there with the required run-rate, if we had got him out, we could have put pressure on their middle-lower order, the game might have been different, dropping three-four catches against him was a bit too many,” Fleming added.
“It was difficult early on, the way we played in the back five was promising, some good hitting from us to get there at 180, we if had taken our chances, it would have been a match-winning score but it was not to be.”