After a disappointing 2020 season, the team led by MS Dhoni performed significantly better, winning their fourth title. Consistent performance across both the legs of the tournament along with the openers giving a great base for the team to build their innings on certainly were the factors that contributed towards their success. In this post, I hope to look into some of these factors.

Openers Shining

It’s not hard to understand why opener’s form is crucial for a team’s success. They lay the groundwork for the rest of the team to build on. This certainly was the case for CSK, with Gaikwad and du Plessis performing exceptionally through the powerplay, maximizing their score while not losing many wickets.

In seven of the fourteen matches the openers managed to play through the powerplay without losing a wicket, thus giving the middle order batsmen freedom to take risk. Furthermore often one of the openers played a long innings providing assurance and security. The middle order didn’t disappoint either with Moen Ali, Rayudu and Jadeja scoring runs at a great strike rate helping the team reach the desired score. This trend continued into the playoff as well with Uthappa replacing Raina.

Bowling Unit

While CSK didn’t have a star bowler, who stood head and shoulders above the rest, their bowling unit did manage to inflict the necessary damage on the opponents as a team. The team managed to take six or more wickets in ten of the fourteen matches, significantly hindering the chance for the opponents to put up a partnership.

Another noteworthy observation is the distribution of wickets among the phases of the innings. Unlike most other teams, CSK managed to take wickets on a continuous basis thus giving no time for a batsmen to settle. This, complemented by their expectional batting, certainly explains their success this season.

Conclusion

Breaking down the season CSK had, it would be only logical to say that they certainly deserved to win the title. Expectional performance from Jadeja and Thakur getting wickets in the UAE Legs are great signs for the Indian team going into the T20 World Cup. Furthermore the emergence of Gaikwad as a reliant opener throughout the season is a great sign for the future of Indian cricket and also rasises an interesting dilemma for backroom staff on who to retain. However that discussion is beyond the scope of this post.

Notes

• The data has been collected from kaggle and are approximated.
• Plotly has been used to generate the plots used in this blogpost.
• Play off matches have been ignored to have a fair comparison amongst teams, with equal matches played.