Liam Livingstone’s all-round show hands CSK third loss of IPL 2022

Liam Livingstone’s all-round show guided the Punjab Kings to a 54-run win over the Chennai Super Kings at the Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai on Sunday. With the win Mayank Agarwal and co climb to the fourth position on the points table and CSK’s kitty, on the other hand, remains pointless. 

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Chasing 181 runs, CSK were dismissed for 126. Shivam Dube made the only significant contribution for the four-time IPL champions. The all-rounder 57 runs off 30 balls with the help of six boundaries and three maximums. Former captain MS Dhoni made 23 of 28 as Ambati Raydu and Robin Uthappa scored 13 runs each. No other batsman could register two digits. 

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For the Punjab Kings, Rahul Chahar kept dominating the middle-overs. The leg-spinner, who played for the Mumbai Indians last year, picked three wickets for 25 runs. Debutant Vaibhav Arora and England all-rounder Liam Livingstone dismissed two batsmen each. Odean Smith, Kagiso Rabada and Arshdeep Singh got one wicket. 

In the first innings, Liam Livingstone justified his Rs 11.50 crore price-tag with a smashing 32-ball 60. CSK gave away only 71 runs in the back-10 with a lot of credit going to their troika of overseas pacers — Dwaine Pretorius (4-0-30-2), Dwayne Bravo (3-0-32-1) and Chris Jordan (4-0-23-2), who used variations to good effect, stifling the opposition batters.

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Livingstone, one of the most destructive T20 batters across global leagues, finally came good with five fours and an equal number of sixes, sending the CSK bowlers on a leather-hunt during the initial overs.

He and Shikhar Dhawan (33 off 24 balls) added 95 for the third wicket in just 8.4 overs and it seemed that another 200 plus total was on the cards. By the time Dhawan was fooled by a Bravo slower, Punjab had laid the platform, scoring 109 in the first 10 overs, which sadly the later batters couldn’t capitalise on.