Rajasthan Royals have a pretty interesting history in the Indian Premier League. The franchise is well-known for their long term vision of giving young talents the best possible opportunity to perform and on the other hand, RR have been involved in some controversies over the years. So as their South Indian rivals Chennai Super Kings with both franchises getting banned for two years in 2015. If we keep that aside, both teams had their moments in the league with Chennai Super Kings obviously winning the championship for 3 times while Rajasthan Royals taking the inaugural season in 2008. Let’s take a look at how CSK vs RR has panned out.
Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals have locked horns a total of 21 times in IPL. CSK have been dominant as usual with 14 wins while Rajasthan Royals have prevailed on 7 occasions. At Chennai, CSK are not giving an inch to RR but at the home venues of RR, CSK have conceded half of the matches played. Let’s look at IPL CSK vs RR in details.
| CSK vs RR Overall | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Played | CSK | RR | No Result |
| 21 | 14 | 7 | 0 |
During IPL 2019, Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals met at Chepauk in the first leg. In CSK vs RR 2019, RR won the toss and decided to bowl first. After the early loss of Ambati Rayudu, Shane Watson and Suresh Raina steadied the ship for the home team. MS Dhoni played arguably his best hand of the season with a blistering 75 not out. CSK vs RR live score was 175 at the end of innings while Jofra Archer was the only shining light for the tourists with a couple of wickets. In reply, Deepak Chahar and Shardul Thakur dismantled the RR top-order very early. Rahul Tripathi and Steve Smith tried to build the momentum followed by a decent innings from Ben Stokes but that wasn’t enough on the day. Chennai took the match by 8 runs and registered two points on the board.
In RR vs CSK 2019, the return encounter at Sawai Mansingh Stadium was interesting as well. CSK won the toss and elected to chase. The pitch looked slow from the outset and RR batsmen had a struggle to move the scoreboard regularly. Short contributions came from the English duo of Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes pushed RR vs CSK live score to 151 runs in the allotted 20 overs. Ravindra Jadeja was standout with 2 scalps for just 20 runs. In reply, CSK had a terrible start and lost 4 wickets for just 24 runs. Ambati Rayudu and MS Dhoni played a rearguard action of the highest quality and took CSK almost home. But real surprise for the fans came in the last over when against his nature, MS Dhoni stormed into the ground from dugout to argue with the umpires over a no-ball controversy. In the end, Mitch Santner kept his cool and won it for CSK with a last ball six.
| LAST 5 ENCOUNTERS | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Played | CSK | RR | No Result |
| 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 |
Apart from the two years in-between, Chennai Super Kings have always maintained their team together. That has turned out to be the main strength of the franchise over the years. Even after severe criticisms of the ‘Dad’s army’, team management has always preferred experience over any other factors. As a result of that, almost all run scoring charts have been led by Suresh Raina and MS Dhoni and it is no different against Rajasthan Royals as well. The duo has 609 and 420 runs respectively against RR. Dwayne Bravo and Shane Watson round-off the list with 193 and 158 runs in that order. Dwayne Bravo has the best average and strike-rate from the list mainly due to his finishing abilities.
Both Suresh Raina and MS Dhoni are having the better average at home compared to their away encounters. Shane Watson is particularly menacing at neutral venues with his ton coming at Pune during the 2018 IPL.
On the contrary to Chennai Super Kings, Rajasthan Royals have remained in constant search of their best lineup even after winning the opening season under Shane Warne. Continuous changes in the team management have also failed to give a clear picture of the strategy of the franchise. The table of top run-scorers against Chennai Super Kings is only firming the fact of an unsettled batting lineup. Ajinkya Rahane is at the top with only 265 runs from 14 innings. Jos Buttler is at the following spot with 146 runs from 4 innings while his English teammate Ben Stokes takes the third position with 130 runs from 4 matches. Steve Smith has a terrible record against CSK but since no one is claiming it, he is at the 4th with 81 runs from 6 innings. Jos Buttler has been the best in terms of average and strike-rate against CSK.
Jos Buttler is dominant at home while Shane Watson and Ravindra Jadeja are still featuring in the neutral tables. Ben Stokes is having the best strike-rate in the matches played at Chepauk but RR need a couple of others to push their cases against the champion side.
| TOP 4 BATSMEN (among current players) | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chennai Super Kings | |||||||||
| No. | Player | Innings | Not out | Runs | Average | Strike Rate | 100s | 50s | |
| 1 | MS Dhoni | 19 | 9 | 420 | 42.00 | 131.25 | 0 | 2 | |
| 2 | M Vijay | 8 | 0 | 295 | 36.88 | 146.04 | 1 | 2 | |
| 3 | DJ Bravo | 9 | 7 | 193 | 96.50 | 158.20 | 0 | 1 | |
| 4 | F du Plessis | 6 | 0 | 155 | 25.83 | 112.32 | 0 | 1 | |
| Rajasthan Royals | |||||||||
| No. | Player | Innings | Not out | Runs | Average | Strike Rate | 100s | 50s | |
| 1 | JC Buttler | 4 | 1 | 146 | 48.67 | 155.32 | 0 | 1 | |
| 2 | BA Stokes | 4 | 0 | 130 | 32.50 | 135.42 | 0 | 0 | |
| 3 | SV Samson | 7 | 0 | 79 | 11.29 | 100.00 | 0 | 0 | |
| 4 | JC Archer | 2 | 3 | 37 | NA | 160.87 | 0 | 0 | |
The conditions at Chepauk have always been slow and supportive of spinners and fast bowlers with variations. Ravindra Jadeja started his IPL journey with Rajasthan Royals but when he plays against them as a ‘super king’, he has been top-notch as well. He leads the wicket-takers tally with 15 wickets from 12 innings against RR. Dwayne Bravo is at second position with 12 scalps from 10 innings while Shardul Thakur has 7 wickets from 4 innings. Deepak Chahar has also been impressive with 6 wickets from just 3 matches. Ravindra Jadeja also has two four-wicket hauls against his former teammates.
Dwayne Bravo leads the home table while Ravindra Jadeja prevails at away and neutral venues. Imran Tahir also makes into the list for the matches played at Chennai. Mohit Sharma has registered 4 wickets from 3 matches at neutral venues. Apart from these names, Harbhajan Singh will also be a serious threat to Rajasthan in the upcoming season of IPL.
If we talk about Rajasthan Royals’ bowling tables against Chennai Super Kings, the situation is even worse. The fact that Jofra Archer is topping the list with only 3 matches against CSK tells you something. He has 5 scalps from these matches followed by Ben Stokes with 3 wickets from 4 matches. Shreyas Gopal has 3 wickets from as many matches while Dhawal Kulkarni concludes the list with the same number of wickets as Shreyas Gopal. Jofra Archer has an average of 15.60 while an economy of 6.50 against Chennai Super Kings.
Jofra Archer is leading the charge at home while Shane Warne had a good record at Chepauk during his IPL days. Shreyas Gopal has accumulated all his wickets against CSK from a single game at Pune. Jaydev Unadkat needs to take greater responsibilities in order to support Jofra Archer as well as to present a challenge against the 3-times champions.
| TOP 4 BOWLERS (among current players) | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chennai Super Kings | |||||||||||||||
| No. | Player | Innings | Wickets | 5w | 4w | ||||||||||
| 1 | RA Jadeja | 12 | 15 | 0 | 2 | ||||||||||
| 2 | DJ Bravo | 10 | 12 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||||
| 3 | SN Thakur | 4 | 7 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||||
| 4 | DL Chahar | 3 | 6 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||||
| Rajasthan Royals | |||||||||||||||
| No. | Player | Innings | Wickets | 5w | 4w | ||||||||||
| 1 | JC Archer | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||||
| 2 | BA Stokes | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||||
| 3 | S Gopal | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||||
| 4 | JD Unadkat | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||||