In two separate instances during the match against Lucknow Super Giants, Chennai Super Kings conceded four sixes in four balls. In a defence of 187 runs at the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow, that proved fatal for the Ruturaj Gaikwad-led side, who were chasing a top-four spot in the Indian Premier League’s 2026 season.
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After a slow start to the season, Chennai had finally begun to put together some consistent results. Four wins from their last five games meant that CSK still had an outside chance of qualifying for the playoffs. However, it all came crashing down on Friday when Chennai were blown away by a magnificent 90-run innings from Mitchell Marsh, who looked in imperious touch on May 15.
Playing on a deck that had good bounce and carry for the seamers, Marsh slammed seven sixes and nine boundaries before getting run out in the 12th over of the game. But by the time Marsh departed, the damage had already been done.
In today’s IPL Play of the Day, we look at how a stretch of 16 balls ruined CSK’s night at the Ekana Stadium on May 15.
On Friday, Chennai Super Kings’ fast bowlers had one clear task: find the length that helped LSG pacers make life miserable for Chennai’s top order in the first innings. It seemed to be the hard-length area where Lucknow’s pacers operated, extracting enough skid and bounce to hurry multiple batters into mistakes.
Young Kartik Sharma and Shivam Dube had played valuable knocks to get CSK to a fighting total of 187. The bowlers simply needed to target the same areas and test the LSG batters early in the innings.
But that plan quickly fell apart as Mitchell Marsh took a liking to the CSK pacers and dismantled them on Friday.
Marsh’s incredible assault began in the fifth over of the match when he took Anshul Kamboj apart with four consecutive sixes. Marsh cut and pulled Kamboj with complete authority as the young pacer repeatedly tried to hit the hard length, hoping the extra bounce would surprise the batter. What Kamboj perhaps forgot was that Marsh was born and bred in Perth, arguably home to some of the bounciest pitches in the world.
The West Australian quickly found his rhythm and ripped into the CSK pacer. Kamboj, CSK’s highest wicket-taker this season, cut a sorry figure after the match, conceding 63 runs in just 2.4 overs, the worst figures in the tournament among bowlers who bowled fewer than three overs in an innings.
It was perhaps Kamboj and, more importantly, Ruturaj Gaikwad’s failure that CSK simply did not think of switching their ploy quickly enough. Cutters, yorkers or even wider lines could have helped on the surface instead of repeatedly feeding a world-class pace hitter hard-length deliveries on a pitch that offered ideal bounce for Marsh.
After the horrific powerplay spell, Kamboj returned to bowl again in the 17th over against Nicholas Pooran. By then, the game was effectively over, but the punishment continued. Pooran smashed him for four more consecutive sixes, making Kamboj the first bowler this season to concede two separate sequences of four sixes in four balls in the same match.
The numbers will look brutal against the young pacer. Figures of 2.4-0-63-0 will remain attached to Kamboj’s name long after this game. But Friday’s loss reflected more on CSK’s leadership and their inability to react under pressure.
A young fast bowler having a bad day is not unusual in the IPL. Allowing the same plan to continue despite repeated punishment is where questions begin to emerge. Gaikwad, standing at mid-off, perhaps needed to step in earlier, calm his bowler down, change the field, or simply ask him to try something different. None of that happened.
Instead, CSK kept waiting for the hard length to magically work while Marsh and Pooran kept sending the ball into the stands.
“I think we were just looking to hit that hard length, proper Test-match length. We felt that there was something there and the ball was nibbling around well, but I think they played some extraordinary shots. We missed our execution in a few areas and on a few balls as well,” Gaikwad said after the match.
For a side still trying to build its identity after the MS Dhoni era, this was perhaps the biggest lesson from the defeat in Lucknow. Adaptability matters as much as execution. On Friday night, CSK were found wanting in both.
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