Mahendra Singh Dhoni made all the smart moves in a crunch contest to lead Chennai Super Kings to a tense five-wicket victory over Royal Challengers Bangalore in the second qualifier last night.

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The Chennai captain strutted his stuff in front of his hometown fans in Ranchi on a testing Jharkhand State Cricket Association Stadium pitch by cleverly shuffling his bowling pack to throttle Bangalore’s batting power.

He then played his part in the 140-run victory chase forging a crucial 47-run alliance with veteran opener Michael Hussey (56 off 46 balls) just when Bangalore were threatening to tighten the noose with the Chennai score reading 61-3 in the 10th over.

He only departed when the scores were tied and two balls remained for the winning run to be hit which Ravichandran Ashwin managed with ease.

It was Chennai’s sixth entry into the final where they will meet Mumbai Indians again to have a crack at their third title. Mumbai had defeated Chennai in the first qualifier by 25 runs and tomorrow’s summit clash gives an opportunity for Dhoni & Co to extract revenge.

Everything fell in place for Dhoni from the time he won the toss and asked Bangalore to bat. Chennai’s bowler of the season, Ashish Nehra fired the first salvo by dismissing Bangalore’s top duo – captain Virat Kohli (12) and the dangerous AB de Villiers (1).

After being hit for a six and a four by Kohli, Nehra asked Dhoni to stand up to the stumps. It had the desired impact as Kohli stayed in the crease to flick an innocuous delivery from the left-arm seamer straight to Mohit Sharma at short fine leg.

In the next over, Nehra trapped de Villiers leg before wicket with an in-swinger.

Dhoni, who had opened the attack with Ashwin, ensured the off-spinner completed his four overs as ‘game changer’ Chris Gayle (41 off 43 balls) was still at the crease.

Ashwin kept it tight rarely giving anything away and claimed Mandeep Singh (4) in his final over to finish with impressive analysis of 4-0-13-1.

Bangalore were in trouble then at 36-3 with all hopes resting on Gayle, who was content playing the waiting game.

Knowing that Gayle was preparing to unleash himself on the left-arm spinners – Ravindra Jadeja and Pawan Negi – Dhoni kept them away from the attack until the dangerous left-hander was dismissed.

The Chennai captain instead resorted to Suresh Raina’s off-spin and although Gayle carted him for two successive sixes, he fell in the same over.

Raina surprised Gayle by bowling seam-up and the Jamaican ended up top-edging it for the bowler to pouch as he ran backwards at mid-on.

Nehra (3-28) returned to pick another key scalp of Dinesh Karthik (28) before young Sarfaraz Khan (31 off 21 balls) gave some respectability to the Bangalore total as they finished at 139-8.

Dhoni praised his bowlers for setting it up and admitted it was a ‘high-pressure game’.

“Credit to Ashwin. I felt he bowled really well and was well supported by fast bowlers. I used Raina against Gayle, we did not want left-arm spinners bowling to him.

“It is very difficult to say what is a par score on this pitch. It was a high-pressure game and maybe they were 10-12 runs short,” he said.