This was an encounter with Kolkata Knight Riders for the Chennai Super Kings for the first time in the series and it has drawn major expectations from the fans of CSK because of the team's exceptional performance in the previous match. KKR won the toss and CSK were asked to chase yet again. An interesting fact here is that the Chennai Super Kings haven't batted first till now in this series. KKR started really well scoring 36 runs in the first four overs before losing the wicket of Shubman Gill. 

The KKR innings never actually took off. Whenever there was an escalation, they lost wickets back to back. Karn Sharma, who was included in the CSK in place of Piyush Chawla, took the 2 crucial wickets of Nitish Rana and Sunil Narine, with Jadeja taking a splendid catch to dismiss Rana. Morgan and Russell lost their wickets in quick succession and it was a huge disappointment since they were expected to score big in the final overs. Rahul Tripathi played a fantastic innings scoring 81 runs which has actually boosted the team to their final score of 167 runs. Dhoni was brilliant with his catching and captaincy that has restricted KKR to a par score.

Chennai Super Kings started well. When it was expected that the opening partnership would make it big once again, Faf du Plessis fell for 17 runs. Shane Watson is completely back to form and he has shown that in this game also by scoring a half-century. Watson has equally balanced the tenacity and stability in chasing the chaseable score. When he got out for 50, CSK was in a spot of bother as they lost 3 wickets for 101 runs and the required run-rate kept increasing. Dhoni and Sam Curran engaged in damage control and pulled the match in favor of the CSK by scoring back to back boundaries.

An IPL is never short of thrills. Varun Chakravarthy had spoiled Dhoni's game as he was dismissed for 11 runs which again gave KKR a ray of hope, as the knight riders had a breakthrough in containing the CSK's middle-order and KKR took it as its complete advantage and grabbed the wicket of Sam Curran soon after. Things dramatically changed after that and it was all over for the CSK in no time. Dhoni was criticized for giving too many chances to Kedar Jadhav and Jadhav proved the critics right once again by scoring just 7 runs from 12 deliveries in such a crucial situation. 

Though Jadeja hit some boundaries towards the end, it was too late. CSK lost the game by 10 runs. It is unimaginable that a team could lose a very simple game like this, thanks to the consistency in their tactical arrogance. Sending Jadhav ahead of Bravo is one example, signaling that it needs to change its gameplans to repair the damages. Full credits to Dinesh Karthik for utilizing Sunil Narine and Andre Russell to the fullest in death overs. KKR deserves every bit of this victory. With the defeat, the CSK has seemingly collapsed its momentum by itself and it has played six matches so far of which it had last four, pushing the team to have a strong resurgence if wishes to enter the playoffs.

The match revealed that Dhoni must re-frame his strategies in picking the playing XI, which is crucial in the winning prediction, particularly, he has been surfaced with the question of keeping Jadhav in the playing squad despite the latter has failed to prove in lifting up the team. It was strongly questioned by Dwayne Bravo was kept out of the middle order batsmen when he was known to be one of the brilliant finishers. 

In what has become yet another batting failure, the strong comeback against the Kings XI had now attained a setback and gave another upsetting episode for the fans amid chasing the modest target of 168, which, for the CSK is possible without a second thought, but this defeat had brought that second thought of whether CSK is losing its grounds of dominance and its class. 

Speaking about the defeat during the presentation, MS Dhoni acknowledged that the team needs to be innovative. He said, "I think we did well in general with the ball, but the batsmen let the bowlers down today. Rotation of strike was important, but I think there were hardly any boundaries in the final few overs, so we need to be innovative at the end when they are continuously hitting a back of a length. That's where we need to adapt better with the bat and I don't think we did that". 

Though conceding a defeat, CSK has managed to stay at the 5th spot on the points table while KKR has elevated to the third spot with the victory by ten runs. The figures of the CSK aren't what it meant to the team and with having eight matches remaining in their hand, Dhoni's army must win at least six of them to enter the playoffs, which would be as tough as they resurge. The CSK will be battling next with the RCB on October 10 in Dubai during which the Super Kings must build a momentum, else it has to brace up for its unprecedented demotion in the IPL.