The runner-up in the first edition of the Indian Premier League, Chennai Super Kings will play their first game of the third edition of the tournament against the defending champions Deccan Chargers. The match will be played in Chennai. This will be Deccan Chargers' second game after they had opened the proceedings in the tournament with a game against Kolkata Knight Riders.

The Super Kings will be led by Indian captain MS Dhoni, and apart from him, there is a fine mix of Indian and international players in the side. The towering presence of Mathew Hayden will mean that the Chennai Super Kings will be looking from their top-order for some good starts and some explosive ones at that. It remains to be seen who will open the innings with Hayden, but one gets a sense that it will be Parthiv Patel, who has done so in the past as well.

However, the one batsman who could look at making an impression and into the side as an opener to Hayden is Murali Vijay. Vijay has had a good run in the lead-up to this tournament and even made his ODI debut recently against South Africa in the absence of Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag. Hence, to call him the country's fourth placed opener would not be too far off the mark too much and hence could give Patel a run for his money.

The Deccan Chargers have their own set of aggressors, but the four-foreign players rule will hit them harder given that some of the players they have may have made it to the team but for the rule. This will mean that there will be some of them who may miss these opening games unless and until the top notch batsmen fail to come to the party.

Andrew Symonds is the one man to watch out for in this game. After all, he has become a freelance cricketer now and will be looking at performing to the best of his ability through the entire duration of the tournament to earn the maximum revenues out of it. Andrew Symonds is a utility cricketer who can bat and bowl with equal poise and that will mean that he is a shoo-in for all the games unless he loses his form badly.

Adam Gilchrist will know that they had lost out in the first tournament because they lost momentum very early in the tournament. They will look not to repeat this against Chennai, but with the kind of opposition they have, it looks to get very interesting!

Tag :- Andrew Symonds   Chennai Super Kings   Deccan Chargers   Gautam Gambhir   Mathew Hayden   Parthiv Patel