Talking Points - Sunrisers fall short against great chasers, again

At the end of Jos Buttler and K Gowtham's onslaught against Chennai Super Kings' death bowlers on Friday, an uncharacteristically vocal MS Dhoni said that they had bowled too full to them, instead of executing their back-of-a-length plan. Dhoni even went so far as to say that their "bowlers had let them down" on the night.

On Sunday, the returning Deepak Chahar led Super Kings' efforts with the ball, getting it to pitch in the length and back-of-a-length zones and getting it to hoop around during the Powerplay. Chahar did not bowl a single ball in the full-length area through his spell, and all of that showed in his excellent figures of 4-0-16-1.

There have been questions asked about Williamson's T20 game in the recent past, but since then, suffice it to say that he has answered them with his consistency at the international level and now, the IPL. On Sunday, he went past 500 runs for the season, the fourth consecutive season Sunrisers' captain has gone past that mark. Without David Warner, and for a while Shikhar Dhawan, Williamson has carried Sunrisers' batting unit.

His knocks in IPL 2018 have followed a well-set pattern - slow starts leading by steady acceleration as his innings have gone on. The result is Sunrisers' excellence in the middle overs, where their run rate of 8.05 is fifth among eight teams in this season, thanks to their captain carrying the bulk of the burden. This has been book-ended by poor starts and sedate finishes, which go some way to explaining their batting struggles through the season. On Sunday, it was the repeat of the same: 29 for 1 in the Powerplay, 41 for 2 at the death, with the 101 off the nine middle overs.

Paeans have been sung about Sunrisers' bowling attack, and deservedly so, but the fact that Super Kings' batting has been superlative this season has been less heralded. Dwayne Bravo and Sam Billings' knocks to take them home early on led to whispers about "one-man shows", but deep into the season, every batsman in their batting order has put his hand up at some point, from Shane Watson and Ambati Rayudu to an MS Dhoni sprinting on second wind, leading them to victories with big runs.

As it stands, they have won five of their six chases, including hunting two 200-plus scores with late-innings assaults. Against the best bowling attack in the competition, their openers led the way, making short work of their 179, Sunrisers' first loss while defending a total in IPL 2018, and only their second defeat after scoring 170-plus since May 2014. The tournament's table-toppers with a gun bowling attack came up against the second-placed side with the best batting order. For the second time in the season, Super Kings came out on top.

Twice in two games now, an opposition batsman has smashed a hundred against Sunrisers' bowling attack in away games, and that could well be cause for concern going into the playoffs. On Sunday, it was early swing in daylight that was the big difference between the two innings. Having lost the toss, Sunrisers' top order found themselves against Deepak Chahar and Shardul Thakur, who bowled 18 dot balls between themselves in five Powerplay overs, at the end of which the batting side only managed 29 for 1.

Chahar, in particular, found significant swing off accurate good-length balls, a feature that was absent under the lights during Super Kings' innings. According to ESPNcricinfo's ball-by-ball data, Sunrisers' batsmen were in control only 69% of the time in their first six overs, a figure which went up to 83% during Super Kings' chase.