File photo of MI skipper Rohit Sharma (in blue) with CSK skipper MS Dhoni.
The Indian Premier League 2020 season is less than a day away from its season opener and the games couldn’t have chosen a better game to kick-start the cash-rich league after months of uncertainty over COVID-19 pandemic.
The two franchises, in a true sense, are the powerhouses of the competition; consistently putting in great performances and nail-biting finishes. The star-studded sides have the coveted IPL trophy seven times between them with MI edging out CSK with four silverware to its name.
While teams like Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad (once as Deccan Chargers) have won the title twice respectively, they too couldn’t match the fan frenzy that followed an MI-CSK side.
With Rohit Sharma starting the golden era of the side after taking on the captaincy in 2013, he has matched MS Dhoni’s charisma as a captain in the league to make it a true sporting spectacle.
While speaking for the MI’s official twitter handle, the Mumbai captain in his own words admitted that the tie is “El Classico of IPL” as nothing else comes close to it.
To the football lovers, El Classico (translates to The Classic in Spanish) only means the best football match between the two Spanish giant and hated rivals Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. While some might also take offend in the fact that MI vs CSK clash is nothing as compared to the rich history of the rivalry between the two big clubs.
Still, it will be hard to deny that no franchise or club competition in cricket matches the rivalry that the two sets of fans share in this part of the world.
MI’s star all-rounder Hardik Pandya admitted that like any other marquee clash, the MI-CSK tie brings the best out of them.
“It has become the game which people look forward to. It’s two of the franchises that are loved most by the fans and that’s how it became special. And I don’t know, we all get our A-game out when we play against CSK and I wish we always do that,” said Hardik.
While the two sides have face each other 28 times since IPL’s inception, MI have managed to edge out the Chennai outfit at all level of the yearly tournament. Out of their 17 wins against CSK, 12 of them came in the league stage and remaining five of them came in the knockout or playoff stages, including three finals.
