CSK vs RCB, IPL 2024 Highlights: Ruturaj Gaikwad off to winning start as CSK captain; RCB lose by six wickets

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: The hierarchy of the BCCI are called on stage and then RCB captain Faf Du Plessis and CSK's new captain Ruturaj Gaikwad walk up. CSK are the holders and so Gaikwad brings out the trophy as well.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bangalore: All matches usually start at 7.30pm, with the toss at 7pm. But this one being the opening match coming after the opening ceremony, will start at 8pm, with the toss scheduled at 7.30pm.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bangalore: There is a big replica of a Kerala Kettuvallam, the Kerala houseboat, in the middle of the ground and on the stage nearby are performers led by the legendary AR Rahman. Singing with him was Sonu Nigam and now it is Mohit Chauhan accompanying him.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bangalore: The Chepauk is famously a fortress for spinners. And yet, a look at the RCB roster would tell you that they hardly have any name of note among their spinners. How much will that impact them today?

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bangalore: As Colplay says, and it was all Yellow. That is the Chepauk Stadium right now. Dhoni may have handed over captaincy but there is no way the CSK faithful will have any name but his on their lips at any stage of this season. And that is the way it is at the moment.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bangalore: CSK's announcement yesterday led to quite a few posts appearing online of people lamenting their lost childhoods. For this is the first season of the IPL in which neither of MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma will be leading a side. Dhoni has led CSK since the first season, Kohli and Rohit both took over as captain of RCB and MI respectively in 2013. Dhoni was also captain of Rising Pune Supergiant for one of the two seasons he played for the franchise when CSK were banned.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bangalore: Faf Du Plessis' utter blinder of an innings is what took the Joburg Super Kings to the playoffs of the SA20 last month. In four months, he will be wearing the yellow again for the Texas Super Kings in the United States. Du Plessis' association with CSK goes back to 2011 but in the IPL for the next 2 months though, he will be leading RCB's cause. Such are the ways of the world of T20 leagues.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: The one thing CSK would be hoping for is to not see a repeat of the 2022 season. Just as how the news was announced this time around, it was revealed that MS Dhoni had handed over captaincy of the team to Ravindra Jadeja. But Dhoni had to then take back the reins when the team went on a run of six losses and two wins in eight matches. Jadeja had a nightmare season as captian and on a personal front, he ended up being ruled out for the rest of the season after Dhoni took over and rumours came up of his time with CSK having practically ended. CSK finished second to bottom that year with eight points. The team below them, interestingly, were MI which means that year the two most succesfull teams in the history of the league finished bottom of the table.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Given how unpredictable the IPL is, it’s one big dare to predict something as volatile as the Orange Cap winner, but our bets are on the Indian youngster who can’t seem to put a foot wrong, YASHASVI JAISWAL. I mean, what has the guy not done? A century on Test debut, hundreds in T20Is and ODIs. Two double centuries in a Test series where he scored more than 700 runs. And he hasn’t even completed a year in international cricket. Bonkers, right?

Last year he slammed the fastest fifty of all time, one of the five, to go with a blazing hundred. On current form, don’t be surprised if he snatches it away from his contemporaries.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Rachin Ravindra's family is from the city of Bengaluru. He had pretty much become a crowd favourite over the course of a truly extraordinary World Cup campaign last year in India and so it is somewhat poetic that his IPL journey begins in a match against RCB.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Rachin Ravindra, Ruturaj Gaikwad(c), Ajinkya Rahane, Sameer Rizvi, Daryl Mitchell, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, MS Dhoni(w), Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar, Maheesh Theekshana, Moeen Ali, Devon Conway, Mustafizur Rahman, Mitchell Santner, Tushar Deshpande, Ajay Jadav Mandal, Prashant Solanki, Mukesh Choudhary, Simarjeet Singh, RS Hangargekar, Shaik Rasheed, Nishant Sindhu, Aravelly Avanish

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Virat Kohli, Faf du Plessis(c), Rajat Patidar, Glenn Maxwell, Cameron Green, Mahipal Lomror, Dinesh Karthik(w), Alzarri Joseph, Karn Sharma, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Reece Topley, Tom Curran, Swapnil Singh, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Lockie Ferguson, Mayank Dagar, Will Jacks, Suyash Prabhudessai, Anuj Rawat, Manoj Bhandage, Yash Dayal, Saurav Chauhan, Rajan Kumar, Himanshu Sharma

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: From a purely cricket point of view, many international stars are using the IPL as a big part of their preparations for the T20 World Cup. Mitchell Starc has stated quite clearly that his decision to play the league this season, something he has avoided for the past 10 years, is so that he is in the T20 mindset come the T20 World Cup. The same can be said most Indian players like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya, KL Rahul, Suryakumar Yadav and so on, all of who have hardly been able to play any T20Is since the end of the World Cup last year.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Virat Kohli is 73 runs away from surpassing Shikhar Dhawan for most runs scored against CSK. Kohli has scored 985 and Dhawan has made 1057.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: In international cricket, was named vice-captain under the returning Jasprit Bumrah for India's T20I series in Ireland in June last year. Gaikwad was then named the captain of the young Indian squad that played at the Asian Games in Hangzhou. They ended up winning gold medal and Gaikwad became the second Indian after Dhoni to win a T20I tournament in his first assignment as captain.

Gaikwad was then India's vice-captain for the first three matches of their five-T20I series against Australia after the ODI World Cup last year. While he was run out for a diamond duck in the first match, Gaikwad was quite sensational after that, scoring 58 (43) in the second T20I and then smashing a maiden international century of 123 (57) in the third T20I.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Gaikwad has been Maharashtra's captain in white-ball cricket tournaments since 2020. While Maharashtra have not won any titles, they finished runners up in the 2022/23 season of the Vijay Hazare Trophy, losing the final by five wickets to Saurashtra. Gaikwad's individual form since being made captain has skyrocketed. In the 2021 Mushtaq Ali trophy, Gaikwad captained Maharashtra and scored 259 runs in five matches at an average of 51.80, including three fifties at a strike rate of 150.71.

In the 2021/22 Vijay Hazare trophy Gaikwad scored four hundreds and equalled Virat Kohli's record of most centuries scored in a single season of the tournament. He was the highest run scorer in the tournament despite playing only five matches, smashing 603 runs at an average of 150.75 and strike rate of 112.92. Gaikwad also become the first batter to hit seven sixes in an over in any form of the game during the quarterfinal of the 2022/23 Vijay Hazare Trophy against Uttar Pradesh. In the final, he scored 108 runs and thus set the record for most centuries in the history of the tournament.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Head coach Stephen Fleming has said on the franchise's website Ruturaj Gaikwad was being groomed to take over from Dhoni for quite a while now. "Behind the scenes Ruturaj and others have been on a captaincy grooming process looking forward to days like this and the opportunities come up but MS is the best judge and he felt the time was right," he is quoted as saying.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: "MS Dhoni has handed over Chennai Super Kings' captaincy to Ruturaj Gaikwad ahead of the start of TATA IPL 2024. Ruturaj has been an integral part of Chennai Super Kings since 2019 and has played 52 matches in IPL during this period," CSK said in a statement on their website.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Anybody who has followed MS Dhoni's career even remotely since 2014 would not have been surprised by the surprise he threw up yesterday. CSK quite suddenly tweeted that MS Dhoni had handed over captaincy of the franchise to Ruturaj Gaikwad. He had done the same in 2022, remember, but this time, it just feels different. For starters, Gaikwad has more experience captaining teams in professional cricket than Ravindra Jadeja did.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: RCB have brought back the blue this year in their jersey, albeit in a way that didn't really fill fans with joy, judging from the initial reactions online. RCB had first brought the blue colour in 2011 and replaced that with black in 2016. With the return of the blue has come a new logo, somewhat similar to what their WPL winning women's team has been donning and incorporating the tweaked name, with the franchise having done away with the city's old name and brought in the current official one to become Royal Challengers Bengaluru.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: When you think of cricketers returning for this year's IPL, the one name that stands above the rest is Rishabh Pant. And rightly so. Out of action following a horrific car crash, Pant had to miss last year's IPL but the way he beat the odds and won the race against time to be fit for this IPL is nothing short of a miracle.

But hey, hang on! Pant's isn't the only comeback this IPL is going to be all about. There are some other household names that are making their grand return to this season as well. For starters, Mitchell Starc is back after 8 years, having last played in 2015. As is Shreyas Iyer, who was ruled out of the last season due to a back issue. Jasprit Bumrah, whose stress fracture in the back haunted India and the Mumbai Indians, and Pat Cummins, who withdrew to focus on his Australian commitments. With all these match-winners back, this promises to be the most star-studded IPL in a long time.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: The IPL auction is the first pit stop ahead of a fresh IPL season, and like the tournament, itself, the event gets bigger each other. In terms of… Cha-Ching! Relate to the sound? If not, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc surely do. The Australian pace-bowling duo became the first two individuals to break the INR 20 crore barrier. Cummins did it first, going to Sunrisers Hyderabad for INR 20.50 crore, and while he did create history to become the costliest player in IPL history, his record lasted less than 40 minutes before Starc outdid him. The left-arm quick, playing his first IPL season since 2015, went to the Kolkata Knight Riders but not before the franchise shelled out a gobsmacking INR 24.75 crore. Yeah, let that sink in.

While Starc and Cummins broke the bank, India's very own Harshal Patel became the costliest Indian buy at ₹11.75 crore, lending his services to the Punjab Kings.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: January 17, 2024. That was the last time the world saw Virat Kohli bat. It's been a long wait ever since. Expected to play the England Tests, Kohli pulled out for personal reasons, which was later revealed to be the birth of his son. Out of sight for almost two months, Kohli finally made his first public appearance on Monday when he landed in Bengaluru for the RCB Unbox event. And as expected, it was chaos. People flocked in numbers to watch their beloved 'King', a term by the way, Kohli wants people to stop using to describe him. But oh, when do they ever listen?

Imagine all that hype in the build-up to Kohli's grand return. More than two months after he last played a competitive game, Kohli will walk out to the biggest roar that there is. The only reaction that can give Dhoni's fandom stiff competition. As history has proven, everytime Kohli comes back from a break, he is virtually unstoppable. Will the pattern continue tonight? More importantly, who will the loudest cheer be for? Dhoni or Kohli? Damn, what a dilemma to have.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: When MS Dhoni stepped down as captain yesterday, the first thought that came to mind was whether MSD will be the entire season for CSK? Last year, his knee was in pretty bad shape, which required surgery immediately. But after almost a year of recovery, Dhoni is back. He may be 42, but a good look up close and personal can easily get you to mistake him for a 25-year-old. The long locks have returned and with those lean muscles, Dhoni looks evergreen. Just like his legacy. And it bodes well for Dhoni fans, as coach Stephen Fleming has shown the faith in MSD to play all the games.

CSK vs RCB Live Score, IPL 2024, Chennai Super Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: There are teams that struggle at a particular away venue, and there's RCB, whose record at the Chepauk has been pretty abysmal. In eight matches, RCB have lost 7… on the trot, while their only win dates back to 2008 – the inaugural edition of the IPL, when they beat CSK by 14 runs. Defending 126, Anil Kumble picked 3/14 to limit CSK to 112/8. 16 years have passed since that game, and from those two Playing XIs, only Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni are left. They were opponents then and are opponents now. The only difference is that one team has had the upper hand over the other at Chepauk. Streaks – both good and bad – are meant to be broken and RCB know it.