Sunrisers Hyderabad won the toss and elected to bat first. This made the Chennai Super Kings to be on the chasing side for the fourth consecutive time in this series. More than anything, the change in team selection was very much expected from Dhoni. As speculated, the underperforming Murali Vijay was dropped from the side, and Rayudu and Bravo were back to the playing eleven. Happiness for the fans indeed.

The top-order batsmen of Sunrisers Hyderabad had stuttered to the bowling line up of the Super Kings with the seamers and spinners of Dhoni's fleet managed to subdue the dangerous players of the risers including David Warner, Kane Williamson, Jonny Bairstow, and Manish Pandey. When the top-order of the risers collapsed like a deck of cards, the men in yellow and the fans hoped that the team will be having a revival and adding a count in its victory. 

It has become a habit for Faf du Plessis. On the fifth ball of the tenth over, David Warner was facing Piyush Chawla. The shot that Warner thought was long enough, actually wasn't. It was Faf who was standing in the boundary line and 'as always' he grabbed the ball, lost his balance a little, tossed the ball up in the air, and caught it comfortably in the end. Cricket lovers are wondering how much he would have practiced personally to do this magic every time in the field.

With the fabulous fielding and bowling, the super kings had the match completely under the control and it was speculated that SRH would get bowled out below 120. All such speculations went vain after young talents Priyam Garg (51 not out) and Abhishek Sharma (31) had smashed the CSK bowlers and taken the team to a competitive 164 runs for five wickets. As Rayudu and Bravo were in the playing XI, it was strongly hoped that the broken batting line-up of CSK would be repaired. 

With the target for CSK being 165, they never seemed to be chasing the score. In the first four overs, the team scored only thirteen runs for the loss of one wicket. Things never improved as the batsmen were hoping that they could win in the last few overs even after wasting all the middle overs with 6 wickets in hand. There was no one to play the innings of Priyam Garg for the CSK. The CSK players didn't build any momentum when things were under their control. As expected, they took it till the last over and eventually lost the match by 7 runs.

Through conceding the defeat, the Super Kings had recorded a third consecutive defeat in the series, and the track record of this kind is new to the team to endure in the recent times and the defeat was unexpected to the core with the fans have been disappointed over the descending trajectory of the team. Chennai Super Kings has played four matches so far in this series of which it had won the first match against Mumbai Indians while losing the rest three against Rajasthan Royals, Delhi Capitals, and Sunrisers Hyderabad. 

When Watson (1 run) dismissed soon after he came to crease, the pressure for chasing an easy target had been transferring to the incoming players and with Faf du Plessis departing due to injury, Kedhar Jadhav came in to the crease and when he dismissed, the super kings had lost the momentum and the pressure was levied on the shoulders of captain MS Dhoni. With Rayudu's re-entry has gone flop, fans expected their captain's knock and a supporting partnership from Jadeja as there were enough overs in their hand. Sadly, nothing helped the men in yellow as they marked their hat-trick defeat. 

Dhoni should seriously re-invent his gameplans. The decision to make Jadeja bat before Sam Curran is one of the weirdest ones given the fact that the team was needing more than 10 runs per over. It was the same Dhoni who promoted Sam Curran up the order in the previous matches. Dhoni himself was struggling to run during the last few overs of the match and his fitness issues were clearly visible. He along with Jadeja and Sam tried hard to win but it was too late. 

The CSK should refrain from the failing strategy and stay grounded to adjust themselves for any situation. Also, it is time to give some rest to Shane Watson who is failing big time, for CSK to have any hope in this series. CSK had returned to the field after a gap of one week only to concede the defeat and one of the questions that the team has been surfaced with is how it is going to revive from the track of defeat and will it able to conquer the Kings XI Punjab in the next match which it will be battling on Sunday. Dhoni has made a history by becoming the most capped IPL player to play the most number of matches. He has played 194 matches so far and through yesterday's match, he had scored 4,500 runs in IPL matches. With conceding a defeat after one week gap, will Dhoni's fleet would re-shape the strategies and gameplans to take on Kings XI Punjab which it would be contesting in a gap of just a day?