IPL 2 – Day Sixteen – KKR pre-books the final spot
No, they don’t want the semi-final spot. They want the final spot in the table.
There is some lawyer advising Kolkatta Knight Riders. He has clearly interpreted the word “Final” to the KKR Captain. He has told him that it will be an “uphill” task going to the semi-finals. He has advised KKR to side step the semi-finals and target for the final spot.
“Just lose the remaining matches and the final spot will be yours!” the Captain has been advised. They are now taking firm strides towards that. From now on the Riders will just gear for the downhill ride to the final spot.
The rate at which KKR is playing what cost Shah Rukh Khan US $ 75 million will soon be a penny stock. Not a penny more, not a penny less. Just one penny.
There was a time, post Cricket World Cup 2007, Indian cricket team was considered good enough to play only against Bermuda. That was the only team India beat in World Cup 2007. Having hit the nadir Indian cricket took a “U” turn to win the T20 World Cup within five months of the WC disaster, but not before “old order changed, yielding place for new”.
KKR has a talented team no doubt, but there is no balance in the team.
Non-availability of David Hussey, Ricky Ponting and Shoaib Akthar is affecting KKR a lot. However, it is the same problem for every other team in the competition that had Pakistani and Australian players – for example, Rajasthan Royals are missing Sohail Tanvir, Chennai Super Kings – Michael Hussy, Deccan Chargers – Symonds etc.
While the other teams have a reserve of young Indian talent KKR has retained virtually none to play in this edition.
Ok! Enough of “bashan”. Lets get to the first match of Day Sixteen and record how KKR won the loss from this match, maintaining their loss winning streak.
Brendon McCullum may not be winning matches, but he does win the toss regularly.
He won the toss (again) and chose to bat first and he also took back his opening slot after trying Dada for just one match as a T20 opener. Chris Gayle made himself available by postponing joining the Windies in England.
McCullum was determined to spend some time in the middle and thereby find the form that he must have thought he had misplaced somewhere near the pitch. He played a Sunil Gavaskar-ish innings (1975 World Cup against England – Sunny batted for full 60 overs to remain unbeaten on 36!) staying at the crease for almost 11 overs and consuming 31 deliveries to score 19 runs. To be fair, McCullum would have wanted accelerate once he found his rhythm – which he didn’t.
This slow innings put pressure on Hodge, Dada and vanWyk to press the pedal. Hodge was the chief run getter, covering up for the slow batting of McCullum scoring quick fire 72 in 43 deliveries with 10 fours and one six while Dada and van Wyk each chipped in with a small but more than run a ball score to give KKR a total of 153 to defend.
Piyush Chawla was the pick of Kings XI bowling taking two wickets though going for about 7 runs an over. While no single bowler got a big haul of wickets, McCullum’s stay for five overs like a statue ensured that Kings XI bowlers’ figures were not much dented.
“When you defend a small total against a strong batting line up you need early wickets” – this what you would have heard commentators saying. Hence I am not going to say that. Instead I am going to say “when you defend a small total against a strong batting line up it is not enough if you take early wickets; you also need to back it up by maintaining pressure on the batsmen”.
Thanks to Ishant KKR got the first wicket off the fifth ball of the first over (as is the trend in most IPL matches) sending back Sangakkara for nothing. However, KKR could not maintain the pressure on Kings XI batsman despite getting the big wicket of Sangakkara early.
I will not attribute this to McCullum as bad captaincy. But he just didn’t have the right bowling resources to apply pressure. KKR fielding was a total let down. Kings XI opener Sohal was dropped three times, Katich was given reprieve once, McCullum himself muffed a chance to run out Jayawardene while in the 18th over Ajit Agarkar missed one run out chance.
What will you do if Ashok Dinda and Ajit Agarkar were determined to provide outside support to the opposing team? There is huge speculation about who is the fake IPL player doing that gossip blog – but I can tell you that there is one fake player in KKR team, that is, Agarkar. He fakes being a cricketer and does it so well that he continues to get selected in the team.
In spite of Dinda and Agarkar, McCullum tried his best to keep up the pressure with the help of Gayle and Murali Karthik. In the final over, Kings XI needed 7 runs off 6 balls in the final over and needed one run to win off the final ball of that over bowled by Ajit Agarkar. Though the commentators hoped for a super over, Kings XI didn’t allow a tie and took away two points packing KKR to the final spot.
Match No.2 of Day Sixteen – Uthappa comes to the party… finally!
The second match of the day was between Royal Challengers, Bangalore and Mumbai Indians. Royal Challengers came into the match having won two of their previous matches; thereby enhancing their chances for a semi-final spot, under the new leadership of Anil Kumble.
I still favored Mumbai Indians to win this match (28th of the tournament) since Mumbai possessed better all round strength. Sachin won the toss and elected to bat first.
Kumble recruited a new guy in his bowling department called D du Preez (one more South African in the IPL). That single decision proved to be a master stroke from Kumble as du Preez broke the back of Mumbai Indian batting, removing Sachin Tendulkar, J P Dumini and Rahane in his first two overs.
Though this shook Mumbai to an extent, old power house Sanath Jayasuriya was joined by Dwayne Bravo and they added 60 runs for the fourth wicket, but Jayasuriya was not at his customary best. 52 off 43 deliveries with six fours and one six is a pretty slow by his standards. When jayasuriya departed the score was 84 after 14 overs when Bravo (50 not out) opened up in the company of Abhishek Nayar (29 not out) scoring at an average of 10 runs an over due to which Mumbai ended up with a total of 149. One more instance of a team batting first and posting a total near the 150 mark in this IPL edition.
Mumbai should have easily defended this total as it had Zaheer Khan, Malinga, Harbhajan and Dwayne Bravo to bowl 16 overs. Mumbai opened with Zaheer and Bravo and reserved Malinga for first change (why?). Kallis and Wasim Jaffer (playing his first match this season) opened the batting for Bangalore.
Jaffer departed in the third over and Robin Uthappa walked in. As per the form he displayed in the previous matches I thought his walk back was imminent. I was wrong. Uthappa may fail a few times but when he comes good he is unstoppable. When he came into the middle, Kallis was already batting on 14. Four more deliveries were bowled before Uthappa got strike. But by then Kallis had sent two deliveries off, hold your breath, Malinga over the fence and had moved to 27.
Though Uthappa opened his account with a four off the second delivery he faced it was not until Kallis reached 37 that he once again got strike. Thus, Kallis had much more than a head start over Uthappa. But then, as I said earlier, when Uthappa comes good he comes good to bang anyone in the vicinity.
Even the strategy break didn’t provide any respite for the Mumbai bowlers, though Sachin tried various bowlers including himself. Some more power hits from Uthappa took him to an unbeaten 66 (with 8 x 4s and 2 x 6s off 42 balls) while Kallis who was at 37 when Uthappa opened his account ended up unbeaten on 69 (with 5 x 4s and 2 x 6s off 59 balls).
And so it was a resounding victory for Bangalore, a victory by 9 wickets and 17 balls to spare. Anil Kumble put smiles on the faces of all RC fans, third time in a row. Three cheers to him, after all he is a Royal Challenger!
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