CHENNAI: Defending champions Chennai Super Kings put in an all-round show to defeat Pune Warriors by 13 runs at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium last night. Pune elected to field and Chennai compiled 164-5, chiefly through a 116-run opening stand between Faf du Plessis (58) and S. Badrinath (57), and then claimed regular wickets through tough catches to stall the visiting team 13 runs short of the target.
Pune had kept themselves in the hunt despite the frequent wickets, and a 44-run alliance for the sixth wicket between Angelo Mathews and Steve Smith brought them to within 25 runs needed off the last two overs.
Doug Bollinger bowled a superlative 19th over, conceding just four and accounting for Smith, and the 21 required in the last proved to be too much for the tail-enders after Mathews was clean-bowled by Dwayne Bravo first ball of the 20th.
Earlier, similarly paced half-centuries by the openers du Plessis and Badrinath – who was bumped up the order in place of the out-of-form M. Vijay – took  Chennai Super Kings to 164-5 on a slow wicket. The openers added 116 in 15.3 overs.  Chennai did not begin with any haste.
They reached 17 in four overs, when Badrinath kicked in, spanking fours off Samuels. du Plessis soon joined the fun, creaming a six and four in Bhuvaneshwar Kumar’s over, the sixth of the innings, as Chennai reached 42 at the end of the mandatory Powerplay.
A phase of calm consolidation followed, as the Indo-South Africa enterprise put their trust in ones and twos, making only the loose deliveries count for boundaries. One such couple brought up du Plessis’ second fifty of the tournament, in 43 balls. Badri too joined the club of half-centurions when a spree of fours off Bhuvaneshwar got him to the landmark in 42 balls.
Chennai suffered a double jolt when both set batsmen were dismissed in the same over – bowled by Samuels –  caught by the same fielder at deep square leg. A few balls later, Suresh Raina was out for a duck, to a short-pitch delivery, which he top-edged to fine-leg. Skipper Dhoni came in and smashed an unbeaten 28 off just 12 balls – including a menacing six off Samuels in the last over – as Chennai posted a competitive total.
Robin Uthappa and Jesse Ryder began Pune’s pursuit with a flurry of boundaries before both lost their wicket to Nuwan Kulasekara. Uthappa was caught fabulously by R. Ashwin running in from mid-off, while the chubby New Zealander was taken by Bravo – who broke into a jig after making sure the ball hadn’t popped out following his dive.
Skipper Sourav Ganguly arrived at the crease, immediately pulling and flicking Bollinger for boundaries, as Pune finished their first six overs with 53 on the board, for the loss of two wickets. They lost another wicket, that of Manish Pandey, to another good catch – this time by S. Badrinath, who ran a fair distance and hung on to the ball through a tumultuous dive at extra-cover.
Shadab Jakati, who had bowled his first over for just four, returned for his second and got the big wicket of Ganguly. The Prince of Kolkata went for a big one and sensing that, Jakati dropped it slightly short – the resulting shot looped up in the air and was easily caught by Kulasekara at mid-off.
The visitors needed exactly 100 runs from ten overs, and although the ball had now started to turn, with Samuels, Smith and Mathews still around, Pune could yet have made a fist of it, but the required blinder did not materialise, leaving Pune stranded on 151-7.