Super Kings surge into fourth
MS Dhoni's Super Kings produced a spirited display in the field to condemn the Mumbai Indians to only their second defeat of this year's IPL competition in a hot and humid Chennai.
The visitors from Mumbai were on track for victory before Sachin Tendulkar left the field with dehydration and the wheels fell off, with the Mumbai Indians ultimately falling 24 runs short.
The Indians were nicely perched at 62 for one when Tendulkar left the field, but they imploded once the captain departed.
Ambati Rayudu was stumped by Dhoni, Thilan Thushara took a neat catch in the deep to get rid of Dwayne Bravo, Saurabh Tiwary pulled one straight to Hayden at midwicket and Vijay took a stunning catch at long-off to send off Pollard to leave them in trouble.
McLaren's dismissal in the 15th over brought Tendulkar back to the crease, with the Indians requiring 77 from 34 deliveries.
Tendulkar added seven more to his tally before lofting straight to Vijay at long-on and, although Harbhajan made a fighting 33, the Super Kings were firmly in control.
The hosts had left out Muttiah Muralitharan going into the game, despite the Sri Lankan being the Super Kings leading wicket-taker of the tournament. With Albie Morkel injured Mike Hussey came in to bolster the batting while Thilan Thusara added to the fast bowling options.
Sachin Tendulkar's Mumbai Indians were without the injured Zaheer Khan, replaced by medium pacer Abu Nechim.
With his batsmen having produced a total of 246 on the same wicket just three days earlier MS Dhoni unsurprisingly chose to bat first after winning the toss. Murali Vijay showed signs of his recent form with two boundaries before being dismissed by Harbhajan Singh.
Matthew Hayden was joined at the wicket by Suresh Raina who looked good before attempting one shot too many against Dwayne Bravo and was caught on the square leg fence. Hayden meanwhile, Mongoose in hand, battled to find any fluency with singles the major form of his runs.
The Aussie opener was joined at the wicket by captain MS Dhoni and the pair threatened to take control of the game in a stand of 50. Kieron Pollard then made the major blow of the innings by dismissing both batsmen off consecutive deliveries. Dhoni was caught and bowled attempting a flick over fine leg and Hayden's power was unable to clear the fielder at long on.
Mike Hussey and S Badrinath struggled to lift the run-rate and it was only a couple of paddles from Badrinath, one flying fortunately of the back of his bat, in the penultimate over with lifted the hosts to 165/4 off their allotted overs.
