IPL Pulse: Sabotaging sense

Good morning,

As you open emails and assignments you successfully postponed all weekend, spare a thought for the IPL, which spent Sunday descending into beautiful nonsense. A batter was given out for obstructing the field, one team scored one solitary run in a Super Over, and another took 12 overs to reach 50. Here's Cricbuzz Pulse, your 2-min morning scan of the IPL-verse.

CSK slumped to their second-heaviest home by balls remaining

Ruturaj Gaikwad and Jamie Overton dragged them to 158/7 after CSK took a leisurely 12 overs to score 50 on a bouncy track

At the other WACA up north - sorry, Ekana - yet another home game, their eighth on the trot, despite Mohsin's fifer

KKR looked safe after Rinku's 83* until Kartik Tyagi leaked 16 in the last over and nearly added two beamers for garnish

The match went to a , where LSG responded by scoring the princely sum of one run against Sunil Narine

Angkrish Raghuvanshi was given out for obstructing the field after the umpire ruled that he had changed the direction of his running on spotting the throw, much to the shock of KKR dugout.

LSG sent an out-of-form Nicholas Pooran to face Sunil Narine in the Super Over. He fell first ball, and none of the matchup maestros shouting at their laptops around the world were remotely surprised.

The goes to KKR and LSG for to lose control, momentum and occasionally common sense.

The goes to Sanju Samson for pulling off a stumping to remind everyone of .

The goes to the bunch of fielders who collectively decided that straightforward catches this weekend were far too boring to complete.

The goes to Lucknow's pitches for doing what saliva on ball and two bouncers in an over have failed to do... that is keep batters mildly in check

with the new ball has quietly transformed Gujarat Titans' bowling at the top. After managing only 2 wickets in his first four games, he has picked up 7 in the next four, taking his Powerplay tally to a tournament-best nine wickets at a strike rate of 12.6, exactly as many as he had collected in overs 1-6 across the previous three IPL seasons combined.

Narine was in cheeky mood after the win, saying he had "no other choice" but to bowl the Super Over and rating the ball that undid Nicholas Pooran as "up there" among the best he has bowled.

Pant admitted LSG "need a break", adding that having "too many minds" on tactics only makes things murkier in the middle. He also defended giving Digvesh Rathi the final over, the one Rinku took for four sixes, with a resigned "bowlers will have to bowl tough overs."

After Sai followed up his hundred with another 87, Gill summed up his opening partner as "the kind of player who can give the maximum reward with minimum risk."

Pooran's run-tally in Super Overs, you ask? 1 run off 10 balls, and five dismissals!

Birdies inform that curators from around the country are booking tatkal tickets to Lucknow to study the rare art of producing home pitches that confuse the home team more reliably than the opposition. With boundary sizes at venues more or less fixed, this is increasingly being viewed by the management as a viable anti-runfest template. "If you cannot move the ropes back, you can at least make sure nobody quite knows what the pitch is about to do," an insider was overheard saying.

after that gut-punch loss to PBKS, and if Kotla serves up another batting strip as flat as the other night, buckle in for another run-soaked evening.

A six will clear the stadium in Delhi and land on a luxury car's moon roof.