‘Rajasthan Royals outplayed us’: CSK batting coach Michael Hussey on their IPL 2026 opener

Chennai Super Kings (CSK) batting coach Michael Hussey admitted his side was outplayed by Rajasthan Royals (RR) in their Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 opener on Monday (March 30, 2026) in Guwahati. He noted that the pitch, which had been under covers, offered early movement that CSK’s batters struggled to adapt to.

Hussey, however, remains optimistic, expecting significantly improved batting performances going forward in the tournament.

Fiery bowling spells from Jofra Archer, Ravindra Jadeja and Nandre Burger and a sensational half-century from Vaibhav Suryavanshi helped RR to an eight-wicket win over five-time champions CSK. “They outplayed us today, but I think it was a good toss to win, definitely. The pitch had been under cover for a long time. There was certainly some movement early, and our batsmen probably struggled to adjust to that movement. I’d expect much better batting performances in the future, especially if the pitches are a bit flatter,” Hussey told the reporters after the match.

He also said the team must learn to adapt better when conditions aren’t ideal for batting, adjusting their approach and scoring areas instead of sticking to a fixed game plan.

The batting coach stressed the importance of taking key lessons from the match to improve flexibility and decision-making in future games.”We need to take the lessons from this game that if the conditions aren’t perfect, maybe we need to adjust our sights a little bit and try to score our runs in different areas. So we’ll definitely take a few learnings from it. We want to try and put this one behind us pretty quickly and move on back to Chennai,” he added.

RR opted to bowl first, and Archer (2/19), Burger (2/26) and Jadeja (2/18) made CSK toil hard for every run as they sank to 57/6 at one point.

Knocks from Jamie Overton (43 in 36 balls, with two fours and two sixes), Kartik Sharma (18), Sarfaraz Khan (17) helped CSK reach 127 in 19.4 overs before they ran out of batters. Suryavanshi (52 in 17 balls, with four boundaries and five sixes) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (38* in 36 balls, with three fours and a six) set up a platform for an easy win with a quickfire 75-run stand. (ANI)