Mumbai: Buoyed by their convincing seven-wicket win over title holders Mumbai Indians on Wednesday, Chennai Super Kings will take on Kings XI Punjab in their second Indian Premier League (IPL) knockout game inside three days here on Friday, with swashbuckling batsman Glenn Maxwell a major threat to their chances.
Riding on the 25-year-old Australian batsman’s brilliant 90-plus run knocks in Abu Dhabi and Cuttack in the group stage of the T20 League, Kings XI have flattened two-time champions Chennai.
But Friday’s Qualifier 2, the penultimate IPL-7 match, at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai, will give Chennai a great platform to avenge those two defeats and leapfrog into the June 1 summit clash against Kolkata Knight Riders at Bangalore.
However, to achieve the feat of entering the final for the sixth time, Chennai will have to stop Maxwell, who simply tore into their bowlers, especially two key spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja on the two previous occasions.
Maxwell, the third highest run-scorer with 539 runs this season, smashed 95 in 43 balls in Abu Dhabi last month to help Punjab chase down a massive 206-run target. And he was even more dominating in his subsequent clash earlier this month at Cuttack, where he hit a whirlwind 90 off just 35 balls to power Punjab to an incredible score of 231.
Ashwin was smashed by Maxwell for 38 runs in just two overs that saw him go wicketless, while Jadeja conceded 37 runs in three overs in which he, too, didn’t get a wicket.
The neutralisation of these two Super Kings’ bowlers by Maxwell will certainly come up for discussion by the Super Kings’ think tank ahead of their do-or-die encounter.
