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Mumbai's Wankhede stadium was brimming with an alluring sense of chaos that has been synonymous with cricket consumption in India, especially in recent times.
It was time for the Indian Premier League (IPL) and a cracker of an opener was scheduled on 7 April between defending champions Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings.
At the toss, which Mahendra Singh Dhoni won and chose to bowl first, Mumbai captain Rohit Sharma was asked about his team composition and he mentioned the inclusion of a young leg-spinner named Mayank Markande, who Rohit hoped would be the surprise package.
Markande was introduced just after the powerplay in which Chennai had managed to score a decent 42 runs for the loss of two wickets.
CSK's opener Ambati Rayudu, a surprise pick considering the presence of Murali Vijay in the squad, had hit a flurry of fours and was playing with a strike rate of 137 when he took guard to the IPL debutant.
After two dot balls, Rayudu decided to take the attack into the Mumbai camp, but misjudged a googly and was adjudged leg before. A couple of balls later, new batsman Kedar Jadhav caught another well-disguised googly on his pads, but received a reprieve after the umpire's decision of 'not out' wasn't contested by Mumbai.
Markande struck in his very next over, removing Dhoni from the equation with a wrong'un to leave the visitors, chasing a target of 166, tottering at 51/4 after eight overs.
CSK's score read 75/5 after 12 overs. Markande's figures were a respectable 2/15 after three straight overs.
The youngster measured his run up for his last over and waltzed in to bowl the first delivery of the 13th to the new batsman at the crease — Dwayne Bravo.
A lot happened in the 13th over.
Bravo danced down the track to launch a six over the bowler's head. Jadhav pulled a hamstring and had to go off the field and Deepak Chahar became Markande's third victim.
It was clearly Markande's day so far and he was well on his way to win a well-deserved Player of the Match award on his IPL debut. But Bravo had other plans.
Former Mumbai captain Harbhajan Singh joined Bravo in the middle and perished trying to improve the scoring.
Chennai needed 60 runs off the last five overs. This was not an impossible task despite having just three wickets in hand.
Earlier in the first innings, the Pandya brothers (Krunal and Hardik) scored an impressive 48 runs in the last five overs to take the Mumbai total to 165 after being 65/2 at the halfway point.
Mumbai's swashbuckling opening pair of Rohit and West Indies' Evin Lewis were kept in check by Shane Watson and Chahar, the highest wicket-taker in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2018.
While there were doubts cast over the inclusion of the right-arm medium pacer over Shardul Thakur, Chahar dispelled such murmurs by picking up the wicket of Lewis with an inswinging delivery in his second over. This also became the first appearance of Decision Review System in the IPL.
Chennai's frontline spinners — Harbhajan, Ravindra Jadeja and Imran Tahir — were treated with disdain by Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan.
With runs leaking, Dhoni turned to Bravo, who too had a pretty rough start to his bowling, going for three consecutive fours off the blade of Yadav.
Watson was brought back into the attack to break the Yadav-Kishan partnership, and he executed his orders to perfection and Tahir chipped in with a wicket that brought the Pandya brothers out to the middle in the 15th over.
Though Mumbai scored 48 runs off the next 30 balls, it was mainly off Mark Wood's bowling, whereas Bravo, Chennai's death-overs specialist, gave away a paltry 11 runs off his 18 deliveries.
Bravo seemed to be continuing from where he left off in the Big Bash League (BBL), in which captaining the Melbourne Renegades, he ended up becoming the tournament's highest wicket-taker.
Bravo's blitzkrieg innings
Chennai were struggling at 105/7 after 15 overs, chasing 165. Still the required run rate of 12 was gettable, but the lack of wickets was a worry for Dhoni's boys.
Mumbai captain Rohit turned to India's death-over specialist Jasprit Bumrah, who landed in a full delivery outside off that Bravo dispatched for six over extra cover. With Bumrah reining in the flow of runs immediately thereafter, the required run rate shot up to 12.75
Hardik's impressive 17th over ensured Bravo's natural game was cramped and with Wood picking up Mustafizur Rahman at long-leg, Chennai was now at a precarious 119/8 with 18 balls left and the required rate at 15.66.
In the 2017-18 season of the BBL, Bravo's batting wasn't exactly tested as he often batted during the slog overs. However, he managed to consistently score 20-30 runs. Even during last year's Caribbean Premier League (CPL), when Bravo led the Trinbago Knight Riders to the title, his bowling exploits made more noise than his batting.
The Dhoni-led Chennai clearly needed the batsman in Bravo to deliver on a sultry Saturday evening at the Wankhede and with Tahir set to take strike, Rohit trusted New Zealand's Mitchell McClenaghan to finish the job in the 18th over.
A single down to third man brought Bravo back on strike and he scored 19 over the next five balls that were a mix of full-length deliveries, a yorker, a short ball and a full toss.
Bravo's highest T20 score since 2017 was 26. He was now on 48 and Chennai needed 27 off 12.
Bumrah tried to bowl yorkers in his first two deliveries of the 19th over, but missed it completely and Bravo hoisted them for back-to-back sixes. He had a stroke of luck when trying to dig out Bumrah's first successful yorker in that over, as the ball trickled back onto the stumps, but somehow failed to disturb the woodwork.
Bravo dispatched the next low full toss beyond midwicket boundary for a six.
CSK now needed just seven runs off the last seven balls, but the match reached yet another anti-climax as Bravo mistimed the last ball of the penultimate over and Rohit at mid-off held onto a regulation catch.
Jadhav, forced to retire hurt earlier, returned to face the last over from Mustafizur and hoped to repose the team management's faith that saw them spend Rs 7.8 crore at the auctions to rope in his services.
He fended off the first three balls, and then sent the next flying over short fine-leg to level the scores and used the crease to hit a boundary through cover to cap a memorable night for the Chennai side that made their way back into the tournament after a two-year suspension.
Bravo was rightfully awarded the Man of the Match and finally displayed a facet to his batting that had failed to surface over the past year. He took responsibility and delivered what the team wanted from their most reliable allrounder.
This was the start Chennai Super Kings needed to make a roaring return into the IPL. This was the start Chennai needed to temporarily silence criticism about the over-reliance on experienced players and not investing in young cricketers. This was the start Dhoni and Co needed to shift focus back on to the field.
More importantly, this was exactly the start that was needed to flag off this 51-day cricket extravaganza that will make or break careers of a number of cricketers from across the world, a tournament that has made heroes out of nobodies — the Indian Premier League.
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