Dubai: Stephen Fleming says Chennai Super Kings were lucky to come away with a six-wicket victory over Kolkata Knight Riders in their IPL match in Dubai on Thursday.
"We were playing well so whenever you lose a wicket in a partnership with (Ambati) Rayudu and Ruturaj (Gaikwad) it's a little bit more difficult to start. But we felt we'd got ourselves into a position where we were probably favourites to win. But then they came back very well and it took a little bit of luck and a few twists for us to get over the line, so mixed emotions really. When you're sitting here and you're out of the competition, you're watching not as nervous. You're sort of almost disappointed watching it unfold but, still very pleased to get the win and hold our nerve for the last couple of overs," Flemming said.
The Super Kings coach says they had worked their way into a winning position in the match, but still needed "a little bit of luck and a few twists" to grab the points.
"They still bowled very well and created pressure and you saw when we lost a wicket how effective they were. The fact we took away probably 80 per cent of their overs with two guys in was very important to us," he said.
"It's a good strategy and the work was done with (Nitish) Rana and (Shubman) Gill at the top. The left-handers were always going to be a problem. We are caught between trying to find out about players and also we desperately want to win games to finish well. So we're still trying to roll players out and give them opportunities. Today wasn't a great matchup in regards to our left armers and leg spinner against their left-handers. So we did, I thought we did pretty well to contain them. We're maybe 10-15 runs more than what we would have liked but we thought with the dew coming in there would, we would have a good opportunity," he added.
Super Kings are on the bottom of the IPL table and will not feature in this season's playoffs.
