Rachin Ravindra made world notice him in the CWC 2023. He played stylish and fancy long innings for New Zealand and hence, he has been picked in IPL 2024 by CSK. He got a chance to open in the first match as regular opener Devon Conway got injured and remained unavailable for first part of the tournament. Rachin made a great impact in his debut match in IPL.
He started off with a french cut missing the leg stump and going for a boundary. But went on to score freely with a 246.66 strike rate. He scored 37 runs from 15 balls with 3 sixes and 3 boundaries. Captain Ruturaj Gaikwad on debut opened with a boundary, the chase. But got out with 15 runs from 15 balls. The opening partnership of 38 runs in just 4 overs gave CSK huge boost in the chase of 174 against RCB.
Earlier, RCB won the toss and elected to bat first. They scored 173/6 after Mustafizur Rahman broke the back bone of the batting side with 4/7 in 2 overs. Anuj Rawat and Dinesh Karthik have put on 95 runs partnership before MS Dhoni ran out Rawat for the last ball of the innings. In the chase, CSK kept going after the target. Rachin’s innings gave them cushion to play slow in the middle overs.
RCB has decided to bounce out Shivam Dube and Ajinkya Rahane(27), Daryl Mitchell(22). While they got Mitchell, Dube struck out. Ravindra Jadeja kept pushing him for 2s, 3s and that helped him in rotating the strike. Dube has been brought in as impact Sub for Mustafizur and he held fort till the end with Jadeja.
He scored 34 runs from 28 balls and Jadeja scored 25 runs from 17 balls. Hence, CSK won the opening match just like defending champions GT did in 2023. Again defending champions of previous year won it while chasing. CSK won with 6 wickets and 9 balls remaining. MS Dhoni did not come out to bat but he guided debut captain for their team to a win against RCB.