IPL 2021 Matches 14 & 15: PBKS v/s SRH & KKR v/s CSK. SRH and CSK move up the points table with their win.

Hello everyone and belated Happy Ram Navami! I hope you all are keeping safe. Let's talk about matches 14 and 15 of the IPL 2021. The afternoon match was played between Punjab Kings and Sunrisers Hyderabad at MA Chidambaram stadium and the evening match was played between Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders at Wankhede stadium.

Punjab won the toss and decided to bat first. KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal opened the batting. But Bhuvneshwar Kumar struck early for Hyderabad and dismissed KL in the 4th over. Chris Gayle came in as the next batsman. Mayank played some good shots in his inning of 22 runs but was trapped by Khaleel Ahmed on the last ball of the 7th over. Unfortunately for Punjab, the new batsman Nicholas Pooran was run-out the very next ball. Rashid Khan got the wicket of Gayle in the 9th over who went back after scoring 15 runs. Abhishek Sharma got the wicket of Deepak Hooda in the 12th over and Punjab lost their top 5 batsmen at the score of 63 runs. Shahrukh Khan tried playing some shots at the end but he was not helped by the fall of wickets at regular intervals and Punjab was restricted by Hyderabad on 120 runs. All the Hyderabad bowlers were very economical but Khaleel Ahmed and Abhishek Sharma picked up the most wickets for their side as they got 3 wickets and 2 wickets respectively.

Hyderabad needed 121 runs to win the match and David Warner and Jonny Bairstow opened for Hyderabad. They got their team a quick start and put up 40 runs in the first 5 overs and 73 runs in the first 10 overs of the inning. David Warner did get out on the next ball but he had set the platform for his team to cruise to victory with ease provided the batsmen played sensibly. And Kane Williamson, the next man did just that with Bairstow and the two won the match for their team with 8 balls to spare. Punjab did get some chances in the bottom half of the inning but they dropped catches and couldn't make the most of those chances. Jonny Bairstow was awarded the Man of the Match for his 63 not out.

This was the third consecutive loss for Punjab and Hyderabad won their first match this season after three consecutive losses in the first three games. Hyderabad would be very pleased with the overall team performance as the bowlers did a very good job to restrict Punjab to a low score and the top order batsmen saw the match through. The addition of Kane Williamson makes their batting a bit better than it was earlier. They would want to continue the momentum from here. On the other hand, Punjab would be very disappointed with themselves. Their batsmen just couldn't stay in the middle and kept throwing away wickets at regular intervals. Their bowlers didn't have much to defend and they can't really put the blame on the bowlers for this match at least.

Moving on to the match between Chennai and Kolkata, Eoin Morgan won the toss and asked Chennai to bat first. Ruturaj Gaikwad and Faf du Plessis opened the inning for Chennai once again and they put up a 50 run partnership for the opening wicket first time in this season. Chennai had 54 runs on the board at the end of the power play overs and both the batsmen went on to score big for their team. Gaikwad made 64 runs in 42 balls and Faf made 95 runs in 60 balls. Gaikwad was dismissed in the 13th over by Varun Chakraborty but Chennai had reached a score of 115 by then. Next came Moeen Ali and he played his shots too. He made 25 runs in 12 balls before he was dismissed by Sunil Narine. MS Dhoni finally came up the order for the joy of his fans and he hit 2 fours and 1 six as well in his 8 balls - 17 runs inning. Chennai ended up scoring 220 runs in their 20 overs and Kolkata needed to make 221 runs to win the match. 

Kolkata got the worst start they could have dreamed off and they were 5 wickets down for just 31 runs in 5.1 overs. Deepak Chahar picked up 4 wickets up-front and played his role superbly for his team. But that's when the match got exciting. Andre Russell decided to take on the CSK bowlers and reached to his 50 in just 21 balls. Sam Curran finally dismissed him in the 12th over to give Kolkata a blow but Kolkata had gotten 112 runs by then. Dinesh Karthick played some shots next but was dismissed Lungi Ngidi for a well made 24 balls - 40 runs. Kolkata needed 75 runs in their last 5 overs and the match looked in Chennai's grip but there was a twist yet again. Pat Cummins scored 30 runs off Sam Curran in the 16th over and the equation came down to 45 runs in 4 overs for Kolkata to win the match. They had just 3 wickets left. Patt Cummins scored his 50 off just 23 balls but Kolkata had just 2 wickets in hand by then. They needed 28 runs in the final 2 overs but Sam Curran came back strongly and gave away just 8 runs in the 19th over which included the run-out of Varun Chakraborty and Kolkata needed 20 runs in the final over with just 1 wicket left. Prasidh Krishna was run-out on the first ball of the final over as Cummins tried getting two runs to get back on strike and Kolkata were all out for 202 runs. Chennai won the match by 19 runs.

The batting has been a positive yet again for Chennai and the openers joined the party too in this match. Deepak Chahar was impressive once again and it was his spell that almost ensured Chennai was not losing this match. The remaining bowlers did go for runs but MS would be pleased to get a win finally. Kolkata would be disappointed with their top-order batsmen yet again as they came so close to lose the match in the final over. Their fielding was sloppy too and they could have saved 8-10 runs with a better fielding effort. This was Kolkata's third consecutive loss and Chennai's third consecutive win. 

Chennai is currently on top of the points table and Punjab is at the bottom. Hyderabad and Kolkata are at the 5th and 6th spots. The next match in the tournament is between Rajasthan Royals and Royal Challengers Bangalore. Bangalore has won all its 3 matches whereas Rajasthan has won just 1. Both teams would be looking to win this match but only one would. We'll have to wait and see which team gets those 2 points from the match.