MS Dhoni believed that the Chennai Super Kings struggled against the Rajasthan Royals in their most recent match because they were losing wickets too early in their innings. At the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Tuesday, May 20, CSK lost by six wickets.

Dewald Brevis‘s innings pace was praised by the captain of CSK. But he believed they suffered from losing wickets early on.

We put a lot of runs on the board, which was excellent, but you have to look at the wickets column because it puts pressure on the lower-middle order, which may prevent you from batting 20 overs. The run-rate was good, Brevis was taking risks, and I thought his innings was excellent. That’s the part we want to slightly better. At the post-match ceremony, Dhoni said, “I thought the run-rate was up, but where we lacked was losing 1-2 extra wickets.”

Don’t want to give away too many runs in the first six overs: MS Dhoni

Dhoni also noted that one area that may use work was restricting the flow of runs on the powerplay. The bowling of Anshul Kamboj in the first six overs (1/21 in three overs) was also commended by him.

Kamboj has assumed responsibility and is capable of bowling good yorkers. He doesn’t get swing, but he does have some seam movement and the ball strikes you harder than the speed gun indicates. One area where we are weak is in powerplay; we don’t want to concede too many runs in the opening six overs. “I think it’s harder when the ball isn’t moving much and the batters are well set,” he continued, adding that he had bowled three overs in the powerplay.

The 187-run total that CSK had scored in the first innings was too much to defend. Because RR gave up 65 during the powerplay, they were always in the lead during the chase. Except for Kamboj, all of the CSK bowlers gave up runs at an economy rate of 10. CSK had lost half of their team by the eighth over of the first innings.