IPL 2018: Qualifier 1, SRH vs CSK – Twitter went berserk as Faf du Plessis’ heroics put CSK in IPL 2018 final

CSK beat SRH by 2 wickets in a thrilling contest to qualify for the IPL final.

Sunrisers Hyderabad faced Chennai Super Kings in the first qualifier of IPL 2018 at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai on Tuesday (May 22).

CSK skipper MS Dhoni won the toss and invited SRH to bat first. Chennai rode on a collective bowling effort to restrict Hyderabad to 139/7 in 20 overs. It was a sorry batting performance from the table-toppers as none of their batsmen except for Carlos Brathwaite (43* runs off 29 balls) crossed the mark of 40.

While Dwayne Bravo scalped 2 for 25 in his 4 overs for CSK; Deepak Chahar, Lungi Ngidi, Shardul Thakur and Ravindra Jadeja claimed wicket apiece.

Defending a sub-par total, Hyderabad bowlers made life difficult for CSK with Siddarth Kaul and Bhuvneshwar Kumar reducing them to 24/3 in 3.4 overs. Rashid Khan dented the Chennai batting line-up even further by removing Dhoni and Bravo in quick succession.

When everything seemed down and out for CSK at 92/7, but Faf du Plessis turned things around by smashing 20 runs in the 18th over. Shardul Thakur, who had a terrible outing with the ball, hit Kaul for 17 runs in the penultimate over to almost seal the deal for CSK.

Du Plessis fittingly hit the winning six off Bhuvi's bowling to secure the match for Chennai by 2 wickets and 5 balls to spare. He remained not out on 67 runs off 42 balls (5 fours and 4 sixes) while Thakur played a great hand of 15 runs in just 5 balls.

Twitterati was amazed to see the way Du Plessis and Shardul turned the match on its head in the last three overs.

Here are some of the top tweets: