Fast bowler Marco Jansen had a delightful beginning to his sojourn in the 2022 Indian Premier League (IPL) after he got the prized wicket of MS Dhoni during Sunrisers Hyderabad’s (SRH) match against the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) on Saturday, April 9 at the Dr. Dy Patil Sports Complex in Mumbai.

Dhoni, who scored a fifty against the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in CSK’s first game this season, couldn’t quite up the ante against the Orange Army. After coming to bat following the dismissal of Shivam Dube in the 16th over, he failed to get going. The 40-year-old perished after scoring only three runs off six balls.

Jansen dug in a short-pitched slower delivery and Dhoni could only hit the ball to Umran Malik at the fine leg region. The left-arm pacer was subsequently delighted after getting rid of Dhoni, who is not far away from 5000 IPL runs.

“Anyone will be happy to get MS Dhoni,” the 21-year-old Jansen was quoted as saying after the first innings.

‘Nervous at the start’

Jansen made his IPL debut for the Mumbai Indians (MI) in 2021, but the five-time champions released him. Thereafter, the Sunrisers roped him in at the mega auction at a price of INR 4.20 crores. In his first game, the southpaw finished with decent figures of 4-0-30-1.

The pacer had butterflies in his stomach, but stuck to his plans for restricting the CSK batters. “Nervous at the start, but nice to get the opportunity. Back of a length is the most difficult to play along with your change-ups… There wasn’t much swing for me, so I went for the cross-seam route,” he added.