CCL 2024 eliminator: Mumbai Heroes send the Chennai Rhinos packing; to play loser of qualifier 1 on March 16

The Celebrity Cricket League’s finale week is here and the first match was the eliminator between teams 3 and 4 on the points table – Chennai Rhinos and Mumbai Heroes. With three group stage wins each to their credit, for the Rhinos and Heroes, this was the first of 2 steps to the finale, a destination both teams were clearly vying for. The winner of this match would get one more chance to get into the finale, while for the loser, it would be the end of the road. On Friday afternoon, two-time champions Chennai Rhinos were sent packing home.

Riteish won the toss and decided to send the Rhinos in to bat. In a match of this scale, a sizeable three-figure total was the only way the Rhinos could make a game of it and they did just that, getting to a 116 for 4, on the strength of good contributions by Sharan (30), Shantanu (29), and, of course, ever dependable Vikranth (40). The Heroes’ bowling was spot on and maintained a tight line, giving away all of 4 extras.

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That total, though, was no mountain too high for the Heroes, but they could not get much of a lead on board, getting ahead by 2 runs only and ending their first innings on 118 for six wickets. Given that both teams were pretty evenly poised, the Rhinos needed to pack it all into their second innings. But the absolutely disciplined bowling and fielding of the Heroes had the Rhinos in a chokehold and all that they could muster was 81 for 6 in their last set of 10 overs, which, effectively was a total of 79 runs only, setting a target of 80 for the win. The Heroes chased it down with 9 balls to go in the innings.

The Mumbai Heroes have won CCL only once so far and that too in 2019, a season in which the play-offs and finale did not happen owing to rain and the winner was decided based on run rate performance in the group stage. The team has made it to the semi-final stage four other times and will play its first-ever finale if they manage to get the better of Jisshu Senguptha’s Bengal Tigers, who lost their qualifier encounter against the Karnataka Bulldozers.

With only two matches left in this season of CCL, make sure to catch all the action on JioCinema for free. If you’ve not caught any matches yet or missed a few, not to fret, replay links for al 16 group stage matches, the eliminator and the first qualifier are available on the platform. The qualifier 2 will be held on March 16, while the final is on March 17.