Fleming – Dew behind the choice of Shivam Dube

The dew during Chennai Super Kings’ match against Lucknow Super Giants in Mumbai on Thursday as compared to the “Niagara Falls,” by CSK head coach Stephen Fleming. He explained that it was one of the reasons why they threw the ball to Shivam Dube in the 19th over. Chennai lost the match after Dube, who bowled part-time medium pace, went for 25 runs. Thus, the choice of Shivam Dube was questioned.

“If you’d looked earlier on, spinning options were taken out of play because it was like Niagara Falls in terms of the wetness and Lucknow played well. So it was very hard to, one, grip the ball for a spinner and, two, to be effective.”Fleming said at the virtual post-match media conference.

“We always knew we had to pick up an over somewhere. We were hoping to be able to create enough of a run-rate towards the end so that we could squeeze someone in.”

Other reasons to pick Shivam Dube

Ravindra Jadeja’s two overs yielded 21 runs. Moeen Ali’s one over yielded 14 runs, forcing Chennai to rely on Dube. “The choice to utilise Dube was made, and they weighed it carefully. “We knew that one over would be crucial, but they (Lucknow) played it quite well,” Fleming remarked.

With LSG needing 34 runs in 12 balls, Man-of-the-Match Evin Lewis and Ayush Badoni hammered Dube for 25 runs to reduce the scenario to nine runs in the final over at the Brabourne Stadium.

LSG then scored the needed runs with three balls to spare to win their first IPL match on Thursday night.

CSK failed to gain early breakthroughs after setting a target of 211. KL Rahul (40) and Quinton de Kock (61) put on 99 runs in 10 overs. This built a strong foundation for LSG.

Because of the heavy dew, the head coach underlined that they had to go on the defence. The decision was made after the 10th over and the choice of Shivam Dube was felt right.