IPL 2 – Day Fifteen – Deccan killed in Royal Suspense thriller
There were “only” two matches on Day Fifteen involving Rajasthan Royals and Deccan Chargers at Port Elizabeth and Chennai Super Kings and Delhi Dare Devils at John’s Ice Berg, sorry John’s burger (let me go and check the spelling at cricinfo and come back) Johannesburg.
The match between RR and DC was bound to be exciting as it pitted against each other two Australian former vice-captains both legends in their own right. Adam Gilchrist won the toss and chose to bat first and importantly lost no wicket in the first over.
In fact they didn’t lose any till the fifth over when Herschelle Gibbs got out pumped by Gilli striking the ball at will and frustrated that himself faced 9 deliveries scoring just 8 runs while it should have been 25 or 30 going by his own striking standards.
Gilli stayed back for another half an hour and saw Bilakhia scratching 6 deliveries to score a solitary run and then found an able partner in Rohit Sharma to plunder the Royal’s attack. Amazingly when Gilli and Rohit were at the crease RR bowled 16 deliveries without conceding a boundary before Gilli broke the shackles with the second of his two sixes. However, once again six deliveries followed without a boundary forcing Gilli to invent a drive across the line and giving a half chance to Yousuf Pathan who is such an optimist that he focused on that half of the chance that sent Gilli back to the dressing room dugout.
That brought together Rohit Sharma and Tirumalsetti Suman (I learned from the encyclopedia of cricket – www.cricinfo.com – that he played for Indian Under 19 in 2002, opens batting for Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy and has scored one century and four fifties). Though they kept showing their attacking intent, could not accelerate much and at the end of 10 overs, due to the combined effect of tight bowling by RR and loss of attacking batsman like Gibbs and Gilli, Deccan scored only 58 runs – their second lowest in the first ten overs, lowest being 55/4 against Delhi Dare Devils.
So far in this IPL edition, the strategy breaks have only helped the fielding side. However, as an exception, in this match, Rohit and Suman came back after the break and started to push up the run rate. By the 16th over they pushed up the run rate from 5.8 per over to 6.8 and just when it appeared that they will launch an onslaught and take Deccan to a score of 160+ (four full overs remained with seven wickets in hand including that of Dwayne Smith. However, Rohit departed on over No.17 while any expectation from Smith only became a myth. In the end Deccan finished with a none too challenging total of 140.
The total was not imposing no doubt but RR had heavily depended on Yousuf Pathan, Ravinder Jadeja and Shane Warne to bat and bowl for them. If one took out Kamran Khan, it was actually three people really performing for Rajasthan Royals while the rest were just tagging on. Therefore, I had a feeling that Deccan, with their rejuvenated spirit and the winning streak will mow over Rajasthan Royals, despite the low target set. They also had a good bowling attack comprising of Fidel Edwards, Pragyan Ojha, R P Singh and Dwayne Smith. A complete attack with no real non-regulars.
True to my prediction, Deccan struck from the word go. Before one could say 1,2,3 – three of RR batsman were sent back to the dug out by Edwards and R P Singh as I witnessed one more first over in this IPL that produced wickets.
My mind superimposed Video clips of RR’s first match in which they were bundled out for 58 over the live images on the television screen.
Pushed back to the wall, RR depended on Ravindra Jadeja to come good. But Jadeja just needed to play a supporting role to Carseldine (a new 30+ making a debut in the IPL) as the latter counter attacked. Together, Jadeja and Carseldine moved RR’s score to a better looking 54 when both Jadeja and Carseldine fell in the same over undoing all the repair work so far done (Carseldine was given out BBW).
At this stage, Royals still needed 87 runs for a victory with all their main batsman back in the pavilion leaving just two trump cards with Shane Warne. Once again Shane Warne displayed why he is the best captain in this circuit. Instead of sending in Yousuf Pathan, he first sent in Abhishek Raut (when Jadeja got out) and then himself walked in saving Yousuf Pathan for the future. As if to make up for Yousuf’s absence at the crease, Warne unleashed some powerful strokes hitting two sixes before getting out stumped by Gilli of Ojha.
In walked Pathan with 49 required off 36 deliveries – for his kind of batting it was no challenge at all, provided he clicked. But Yousuf has been in murderous form in this IPL. He went in, faced 13 deliveries to score 24 with two mighty sixes and two fours and got out off the 14th when RR needed 11 runs of 12 deliveries.
With Raut and Harwood at the crease tension built up. Both sides were evenly matched at this stage and I thought Deccan had the upper hand as the overs were to be bowled by Smith and Edwards. They would have won the game if only they capitalised on three gift wrapped opportunities for run outs that Raut and Harwood presented to them and a caught and a sitter dropped by Venu Gopal Rao.
Add to these missed chances an unlikely misfield by Rohit Sharma off the last ball of the 19th over that gave four runs to RR instead of two you will have Rajasthan Royals celebrating a thrilling win instead of Deccan Chargers.
Match 2 – Chennai Super Kings back in reckoning
Delhi Dare Devils started the match on the backfoot – without Virender Sehwag who sat out due to injury and Gauti took over as Captain. CSK dropped Parthiv Patel and played Murali Vijay as the third Chennaite in the team, Balaji and Badrinath being the other two.
Experts went in before the start of the match, read the pitch and gave a verdict that a 200+ score was in the offing. According to them anything less than 190 would be difficult to defend. They predicted but for fans like me we had to wait for 40 overs to know if they were right or wrong.
Gautam Gambir as Captain of the Dare Devils dared to send Chennai in after winning the toss. He probably wanted to see if the experts were right. Experts not only predicted that the pitch was full of runs but also that there will be “dew” factor which would help the team batting second.
Vijay accompanied Hayden to open the batting and for the second time in the day for the team batting first there no wicket fell in the first over. But then, there was no Royal Challengers batting in either of the matches or Kolkatta Knight Riders.
At the start of the match when Vijay was taking guard one got to know the statistics that in the 25 completed games up to the match between Deccan Chargers and Rajasthan Royals there were 17 first ball ducks of which 10 were cooked by Royal Challengers Bangalore. Made me think if they drank so much that they needed all those ducks for side dish! (Is this laying eggs that count?) The statsman didn’t duck out much more on this stat hence I could not find out if KKR were the next best (or worst?) in terms of first ball ducks – remember Brendon McCullum and Saurav Ganguly?
As if a copy of the first match, the first wicket was last only in the fourth over and when the team batting first was still in the thirties. While it was Gibbs, the batsman taking first strike, who fell first in the first match, in this match, it was Vijay, who took first strike and was the first to leave, except that he scored 6 more than Gibbs – scoring 14.
The similarity didn’t end there, the second wicket too fell in the sixth over and to the first change bowler (Sangwan – Ravinder Jadeja) and it was the only wicket taken by them. 
the only difference being in the case of Deccan the second wicket was of the No.3 batsman while for CSK it was the second opener – Hayden.
But before he fell, Hayden did enough to keep his Orange cap in tact, scoring 30 with the help of one six and four fours.
Hayden is powerful no doubt but is he having diabetes? I thought he has and his Doctor advised him to walk as much as possible. Since generally he scores only by boundaries the chances for him to walk is less even when he “runs up” big scores.
Today he decided to walk at least a few steps, and he did so by walking towards the bowler and then whacking the deliveries. One straight drive by Hayden made walking upto the pitch of the delivery was so powerful that Murali Vijay standing at the non-striker’s end had to time his jump to remain out of range of that powerful drive and so remain available for the next match for Chennai.
With the departure of the two openers the successful partnership of Suresh Raina – Badrinath re-commenced from where they left in the previous game. They matched stroke for stroke while taking the CSK score from 46 to 112 before Raina broke the partnership at will. But not before going berserk in the tenth over hoisting Amit Mishra over mid wicket for a huge very sweetly timed six and following it up with another sweep this time slightly behind square for a four. These two strokes displayed the best form that Raina was in.
Just in case people thought post strategy breaks, only the bowling side was doing better, Badrinath twisted the tale scoring a mighty six off the very first ball post the killer break off Dilshan and followed it up with a four in the same over. In the following over (12th of the innings) of Sangwan Badri reversed the order by first hooking Sangwan for a four and following it up with another hook for a six and finishing off the over with a beautiful cover drive for four. By the twelfth over CSK had moved to 106 for the loss of just the openers.
Then the slide started as if Dhoni thought enough was enough and Chennai slid from 106 for 2 to 163 all out and Badrinath ended up the top scorer with 45.
The pundits once again came during innings break and said 163 was not a good total to defend on a pitch good for a 200+ score. Less than par score, dew due to arrive – CSK must stare at defeat, one thought.
But that one was not Dhoni and there was another man by name Jakati in Chennai Super Kings team who also thought in the same lines like Dhoni. Though till the 15th over Delhi was well on road to pull of a victory, thanks to superlative batting by Delhi opener Warner and Dinesh Karthik, both whom scored half centuries scoring at more than run a ball (especially Karthik who scored even faster), once Jakati was introduced and Muralitharan applied further pressure Delhi folded up fast between the 16th and 20th over giving an impressive win for Chennai Super Kings, their second in a row bringing them back in contention for a semi-final spot.
(I always believe that the stock market analysts and the expert pitch readers never get it right when they project something. Before the CSK V. Delhi Dare Devils match, they said it is a 200+ pitch. CSK scored 163 and in reply Delhi scored 145).
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The way Dwayne Smith was playing i thought they will score the required runs in 15 overs. Once his wicket fell it was a march past by the rest of the batsmen. Though it looked a one sided match at the end it was a pleasure to see Chennai coming back to winning days. More than that i was pleased to see Dhoni finding form and getting some good runs on the Board.
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