The first quarter horror show that undid CSK

At 3:15 PM local time at Chepauk on Sunday (April 26), it was announced that the attendance inside the stadium was only over 17,000. That was quite an alarming number considering only 15 minutes remained for the first ball to be bowled. It was understandable to an extent given the sweltering heat but CSK were batting first so the number was expected to go up soon. At 4:15 PM, exactly an hour later, another update arrived. That number had swelled to 30,370. But by then, a horror show had transpired in the middle. Those latecomers were clearly not left ruing their decision given the scorecard read 37/4 after 8.2 overs.

It was one of the worst starts in recent memory in the IPL. CSK came into this contest on the back of a massive statement win in Mumbai over their arch-rivals. Given they had also beaten KKR in their previous home game, CSK were expected to carry that momentum forward. However, it was a classic case of taking one step forward and two steps back. Almost a month ago, CSK put on a similar show with the bat in their first game of the tournament in Guwahati. Sunday was an encore in many ways. It was quite evident right from the outset that scoring runs wouldn't be as easy as it was on Saturday, when nearly 1000 runs were scored across the two games.

The ball whizzed past Sanju Samson's outside edge on multiple occasions in the very first over bowled by Mohammed Siraj. At the other end was Kagiso Rabada who had also bowled three overs on the trot in the Powerplay, like Siraj. Nothing was bowled full, with a little over 50% of the deliveries being bowled on the good length, with the rest being short. There was good bounce on offer and the ball also kept low on a few occasions. However, it certainly wasn't a surface where a team needed 12 overs to go past 50 - the slowest this season.

This predicament was largely CSK's own undoing. Urvil Patel finally got a game but Rabada nipped things in the bud. This was the last ball of the fourth over and CSK's score was 25/2. This is where we saw them lose the plot. The panic button was pressed. Not picking Sarfaraz Khan in their XI already seemed a dubious call. And now, he was summoned after those two early wickets. It's not often we see an impact substitute summoned after just four overs into a game. CSK did it earlier in that first game against RR. Almost a month later, they did it again. It was a baffling call in many ways and it drew sharp criticism from several quarters, throwing question marks over the home team's tactical calls.

Earlier this year, Stephen Fleming was at the helm in the opposition dugout when Dewald Brevis rescued his team against JSK from 7/5 in the SA20. Yet, on a slightly tricky surface, CSK weren't willing to send Brevis in at No.4. They also had their INR 14.2 crore recruit Kartik Sharma on the sidelines. He is a regular at No.4 for his domestic state side. But here, he wasn't given the backing to arrest a slide and lead a recovery alongside his captain. At the post-match press conference, Fleming revealed that his team 'were a little bit worried' about the GT attack and as a result, they wanted to strengthen their batting further. The result? They couldn't call upon Mukesh Choudhary to bowl in the Powerplay and had to hand the ball over to Jamie Overton in that phase to make up - a move that obviously didn't work in their favour.

Amidst all the carnage, Ruturaj Gaikwad began in fine fashion with a couple of early boundaries but wickets at the other end forced him to head into a shell, as a result of which there were no boundaries off his bat for 35 deliveries at one stretch - easily a record this season. He took 49 balls to bring up his fifty, and that's the slowest for any individual in this Impact Sub era. After the fourth over, that run rate didn't touch six again until the 15th and the team's 100 was brought up after 94 deliveries. For context, these are the number of deliveries taken to reach 100 by the four teams in action just the previous day - 60 (DC), 32 (PBKS), 54 (RR) and 41 (SRH). Despite the lacklustre start, CSK still made 119 from their last 10 overs. However, modern-day T20 cricket leaves no margin for errors especially if those errors span a quarter of the game. The disastrous show CSK put on in the first ten overs eventually proved to be the difference, as GT chased down the target with relative ease.

"I don't want to sound like I'm making too big an excuse, but I just think the first 10 overs today were tough in terms of conditions," Fleming said after the game. "That's what we felt. We were all looking through a different lens. But we felt it was tough, and then we were always behind the game."

That is indeed a fair assessment. But what it also does is mask the fact that some of the damage is self-inflicted - a result of some reckless cricket and reckless decision-making. CSK have already played eight games this season now. Their recent home record continues to remain poor and now after a five-day break, they will turn out at Chepauk again, hoping for another opportunity to revitalise this campaign. A day before the game, we saw reports that MS Dhoni was purposefully to ensure he wouldn't disrupt a winning combination. It's no longer a winning combination now. If the MI result last week was morale-boosting, this one was definitely morale-sapping.