Chennai Super Kings captain MS Dhoni battled severe back pain during his valiant knock of 79 that took his team to within four runs of victory against Kings XI Punjab in Mohali on Sunday.

Dhoni hit five sixes and six boundaries during his 44-ball innings and looked on track to pull off a remarkable win. Chennai needed 17 runs in the last over and Dhoni hit seamer Mohit Sharma for a boundary to bring the equation down to 11 from three balls. However, Dhoni failed to connect with the next ball and turned down a single on the penultimate ball before depositing the final delivery for a six.

After the match, Dhoni revealed he was batting with severe back pain and was relying almost exclusively on his forearms to hit boundaries.

“The back is pretty bad, but God has given me lot of power and I don’t need to use my back a lot,” Dhoni said. “My arms can do the job. It shouldn’t be too bad because I know what happened, and when you know the extent of injury, you know how bad it really is.”