What a day we had today watching the IPL!!!! The mongoose finally came out and completely dominated the bowlers. I reckon they should consider changing its name to “A bull” as it completely helps in smashing the ball all around the park. Apart from that we saw the Deccan Chargers record their first win at “home”( not Hyderabad but Cuttack). It took them over 10 matches to do so which includes the 2 matches they played in the Champions League.
Feroz Shah Kotla once again produced a run fest as Chennai successfully chased down a target over 180. It is a good sign after the disaster of a pitch we saw during the India-Sri Lanka ODI series. Delhi made a few changes to their team due to the absence of Gautam Gambhir. David Warner walked in with Virender Sehwag and he hardly had to do anything as Sehwag was just going after everything. The Daredevils will be very happy with Sehwag’s form, however they would be a touch concerned about their middle order in particular Dilshan and De Villeirs. Dilshan played a very uncharacteristic inning and it just got down the run rate. This put a little pressure on Sehwag as he was the only one finding the boundaries. Losing both of them and De Villeirs in a heap would have certainly put pressure on Delhi but I think Mithun Manhas played a very smart inning with the help of Karthik and Bhatia. Coming to the run chase, it was a Hayden Mongoose show. He came in with the normal bat but changed after the 2nd over. Thereafter, he completely dominated the bowling. It certainly could be seen that the bat gives the batsman more power to hit a shot. Some of the sixes Hayden hit were flat and long. You see such sixes maybe once in and inning when a batsman plays with a normal bat but with the mongoose they were a regular feature. Suresh Raina tried the bat for an over but he again switched to the normal blade. Overall, it was a good performance by Chennai. They took their catches, bowled well after Sehwag got off to a great start and batted well (Hayden and Raina in particular, Vijay in the end to finish off the game). Some of the catches Chennai took were absolutely brilliant. Kemp’s catch on the boundary will go down as one of the best of the tournament. Having misjudged it, he did brilliantly to get hold of it just before the boundary. Raina was brilliant in the infield taking three tough catches. This just goes to show “Catches win Matches.” Delhi, on the other hand will be worried about their bowling. Nannes is doing well for them but they need someone to support him till Nehra comes back from injury. Umesh Yadav looks a good prospect; he is fast but just needs to get a little tighter. Mishra is fine in the middle overs but again there has to be somebody at the other end to aid him. Bringing in Avishkar Salvi in Cuttack won’t be a bad idea when they take on the Chargers on Sunday. They will have to go to the drawing board and chalk out their bowling strategies for the games to come.
In the first ever IPL game at Cuttack we saw the Chargers get to their first “home” win. Batting first Deccan raced away to a 100 in their first 10 overs. Punjab bowled very well to restrict them to 168 but when they batted their top order completely failed with the exception of Ravi Bopara. I can’t understand why Yuvraj Singh throws hit bat after hitting his first boundary. He did that in the first game against Delhi and did it again here. They lost 5 wickets for just 60 odd runs and after that it was always going to be difficult. Irfan Pathan put up a very good performance with both bat and ball. His antics with the bat may have created some butterflies in Gilchrist’s stomach. The problem with Punjab is that their batting and bowling departments aren’t performing at the same time. Today, it was the bowling that did well and their batting failed with the exception of Pathan and Bopara, and you don’t win T20 games like that. They have a good team, so it is difficult to make out what they are missing at the current moment. Synchronization maybe???
We have two games tomorrow. Rajasthan will again search for their first win of the tournament at their moth ridden “home” ground at Ahmedabad when they take on Kolkata at 4PM. The second game will be interesting as Mumbai and Bangalore face off at the Brabourne Stadium. Both teams will come in with confidence and it will be interesting to see who will emerge victorious.
Until then….Bye.
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