IPL 2021: Pollard's 'Beast Innings' Made The Difference, Says CSK's Fleming

Chennai Super Kings (CSK) head coach Stephen Fleming termed Mumbai Indians' (MI) Kieron Pollard's unbeaten 87-run knock a "beast innings" and said "we did everything right" but failed against the big West Indian.

MI won by four wickets at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Saturday with Pollard punishing all the CSK bowlers in his 34-ball knock, which singlehandedly took the game away from the Chennai franchise.

"We seemed to be playing incredibly well and it was Pollard's beast innings that made the difference. If you look at it, he was the mainstay. We did a lot of good things around him but couldn't shut him down...we did everything right but were done in by a fine innings in the end," lamented the New Zealander.

The CSK tactician felt that despite scoring in the vicinity of 220 runs on Saturday, the team could have added another 10 runs to the total, given that the wicket was playing true.

"We did incredibly well to get just below 220, but we always feel that in games like these, the quality of (opposition) batting in the small ground and good surface (to bat on), it's (big totals) sometimes very hard to defend."

The coach though absolved Ravindra Jadeja for his "slow batting". The dependable CSK allrounder remained unbeaten on 22 off 22 deliveries, which many would agree was below-par batting.

While CSK were able to score 82 in the final five overs, Jadeja's slow batting stood out.

But Fleming said: "At the other end, it was high scoring. Sometimes, it works that way that you have one person going incredibly well and the other person turns over the strike. We look at the partnership rather than just at the statistics and our last 5-10 overs were very good."