It was the Shane Watson show at Chennai’s new home in Pune as the Australian’s brilliant century helped the Chennai Super Kings drown Rajasthan Royals in a pool of misery.

After winning the toss and bowling first, Rajasthan Royals started the innings by giving Stuart Binny the ball. As a result, Shane Watson capitalized right from the word go.

Chennai took 14 runs from Binny’s over, which started with a no-ball and put Rajasthan on the back-foot from the word go. Although it should be added that there was a dropped catch from Rahul Tripathi in the fifth ball.

There was no looking back after that as Chennai cruised to a score 204 in their 20 overs. It could have been much more had Shreyas Gopal not bowled wonderfully to take three wickets from his four overs.

In response, Rajasthan Royals made another blunder by opening with Heinrich Klaasen. It was absurd since both Jos Buttler and Rahul Tripathi – who had a wonderful IPL 2017 while opening the innings from Pune Supergiants – have opened before in the format while Klaasen is a middle-order batsman.

Klaasen departed early and only Ben Stokes put up a fight with the bat as he scored 45 from 37 balls. Chennai bowled well as a unit and dismantled the Rajasthan batting unit for 140 runs in 18.3 overs.

Shane Watson was awarded the man of the match for his 106 runs and a wicket.

Score:

Chennai Super Kings – 204/5 after 20 overs.

Shane Watson – 106 (57)

Shreyas Gopal – 4-0-20-3

Rajasthan Royals – 140-all-out from 18.3 overs.

Ben Stokes – 45 (37)

Karn Sharma – 1.3-0-13-2