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TtDsDioss – How will you pronounce it? Come on tell me. That is how difficult to pronounce names like Ntini, van Wyk, Mbangwa, van der Merve.

Ok let me decode TtDsDioss.

It is not some nick name I am giving to any player or official like the Fake IPL player has done. TtDsDioss is simply the abbreviation of my modified version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and reads “Twinkle twinkle Deccan stars Dhoni is our super star”.

Thankfully today there was only one match on Day Seventeen that started at 8 PM IST. I was able to watch the full match and the advertisements of which the one I most like is the Bharti Airtel one that has the Guru fame Madhavan – Vidya Balan. Romance between husband and wife is the theme and is superbly done. AirTel advertisements surely ranks as some of the best on the Indian Television screen – in my humble opinion. For those who have not seen the advertisement, you can watch one here.

Dhoni won the toss and elected to bat first. Chennai Super Kings new opener Murali Vijay (playing his second match) walked in with the towering – both in terms of physique and runs scored in this tournament so far – Mathew Hayden. One has to find out if Hayden was taking lots of Complan in his childhood for his legs and hip above most other players in IPL2. Only Ishant Sharma is a feeble competition for Hayden in terms of height but no where near in terms of body width. But Ishant is a bowler and cannot afford width.

Chennai got a super start with Murali playing with confidence and Hayden shattering confidence of Deccan Charger opening bowlers. They put on a rapid fifty opening partnership before Hayden fell in the seventh over scoring 43 runs that including 38 runs accumulated from boundary hits. He packs so much power to this shots that if it is a clean hit it goes out of the stadium and if mistimes lands in the middle of the crowd. In this innings he had two mishits which landed in the crowd.

Murali Vijay and Hayden put on 61 for the opening wicket in just over six overs (36 balls) of which Hayden faced 26 deliveries to score his 43. Amazing strike rate and total dominance.

Dhoni has not been getting much strike in this tournament. So he promoted himself ahead of the in form Suresh Raina to get a longer stint at the crease. He was sedate in the beginning allowing Murali Vijay to take charge. First fifteen deliveries faced by Dhoni just produced around seventeen runs – just about run a ball but very slow by his standards.

He accelerated from then on to score his next 41 runs in 22 deliveries to remain unbeaten of 58 off 37 deliveries – more like the Dhoni we know off. While Dhoni was building his innings came Suresh Raina starting to score boundaries from the moment he left the dug out. Raina compiled a double quick 32 in just 19 balls with one four and two sixes.

With all the top four batsman making Hyderabadi Biryani of the Deccan bowlers Chennai Super Kings put up a reasonably above par score of 178 challenging Deccan’s to charge.

Deccan came into this match with two consecutive defeats (to Delhi Dare Devils and Rajasthan Royals) and wanting to get back to winning ways.

They needed a good start to chase the target set by Chennai Super Kings that required them to score around nine runs an over to stay in the hunt.

Deccan had the batting to do that. Even ten an over is not a problem if Adam Gilchrist and Herschelle Gibbs blasted in unison.

Unfortunately that was not to be. Once again the IPL opening over jinx played spoil sport. I took the strategic break  to make my coffee and by then Deccan had lost both Gilchrist and Gibbs, Gilchrist striking gold with a golden duck and Gibbs also departing without troubling the scorers. V V S Laxman is surely a misfit in the Twenty/20 format and proved it again by scoring one more duck for himself.  Laxman started his Twenty/20 debut with a duck and slowly improved his performance to go downhill again.  See the picture below, I have painstakingly constructed (thanks to Cricinfo for the picture).

By the time Laxman departed Deccan had just one run for the loss of three wickets (what more can you expect to be the score when the top three batsman score nothing?).

Then commenced one of the most entertaining and at time hilarious (courtesy fielding of Chennai Super Kings) partnerships in this IPL edition between Rohit Sharma and Dwayne Smith.  For some time one forgot if Deccan was playing at 100 for 3 or 1 for 3 as both Rohit and Smith set to counter attack the Chennai bowlers.

Smith sure walked in with lots of luck.  If the old saying is “Cats have nine lives”, one was inclined to add “And Dwayne Smith is like a cat”.

Smith was twice dropped off successive balls and escaped being run out thrice off the same ball (how many times one gets to see such an incident?) first time escaping a direct hit from point, escaping again the back-up fielder Badrinath’s throw muffed by Jakati and for the third time when Jakati re-tried to hit the stumps from about two yards with 24 stumps visible!

2.5 Morkel to Smith, 2 runs, oh my god, Dwayne Smith should have been gone, three fielders gathered around that mishit from Smith, extra cover, cover and deep point converge but no one goes for it

2.6 Morkel to Smith, 2 runs, Smith is leading a charmed life here, he tries to clip the ball to midwicket, gets a top edge which swirls towards third man, where a howler Sudeep Tyagi keeps Smith at the crease, that was a dolly

4.1 Morkel to Smith, 1 no ball, wild delivery from Morkel, a waist-high full toss on leg stumo after the attempted yorker goes wrong, Smith barely gets out of the way

8.3 Jakati to Smith, 1 run, a mental match becomes crazier still, there were at least four chances to run out Smith there, Smith hit it to deep point, the bowler doesn’t collect the return, Badrinath backing up, throws it back to the bowler who doesn’t collect the throw again but breaks the stumps, Smith and Suman were almost at the same end at this time, Jakati picks the ball and tries to hand it to Badrinath who is at the stumps now but flicks it wide of him, before Smith finally gets home

Harsha Bogle commentating at that time remarked “Dwayne Smith may want to walk in the middle of an highway today”.   Fellow commentator replied “I have a better idea, take him to a casino and make him play red or black!”

Thankfully for Chennai, Smith’s luck ran out immediately (even if Chennai Super Kings were not inclined to run him out) and he got out LBW to Jakati off the last ball of the nineth over,  same over in which he got the triple reprive, but before departing had played a really beligerant knock, scoring 49 of just 23 balls.  One must admit that Deccan would have fancied their chances of winning the match as long as Dwayne Smith was there giving some scares to Chennai Super Kings.  However, after Dwayne Smith’s luck ran out none else offered any resistance from Deccan save for a small chancy cameo from Tirumalasetti Suman.

The misadventures of Chennai continued unabated even after Dwayne Smith departed.  Suman was dropped twice in one over off Raina.  When Suman hit one in the air, sure that he will be caught at the deep, Harsha Bhogle exclaimed “there is another one going down” meaning one more wicket was going down, but Badrinath put the ball down instead having the wicket go down.   Just the delivery before that Suman was also dropped by Raina off his own bowling.

These missed chances made me feel if Chennai were playing as Jockers instead of Kings. Thankfully, Jagati retrieved the situation in the next over clean bowling Harris for his fourth wicket second time in two matches. The way Jagati is bowling, there is serious competition for Pragyan Ojha as the preferred left arm spinner in the Indian team.

In all that melee of dropped catches and missed runouts at a very crucial phase of the match, it was amazing to see Captain Dhoni keep his cool.  Not even a sigh could be seen in his face. How can you do it Mahi? You sure is a distant (separated by generations) cousin of Buddha. I would love to see that scene of the triple runout miss  replacing Dhoni with Dada! Dada would have given any actor worth his salt a run for his money both with action and dialogue delivery.

Finally, despite the misfields Chennai Super Kings won the match comfortably by a wide margin of 78 runs Dhoni, well deservedly won the Man of the Match award for his superb unbeaten 58 and cool captaincy.

The way Deccan lost the match made me think if Deccan Chargers should be renamed as Deccan Queen (the passenger train that runs between Mumbai and Pune). Whether winning or losing they do it like a train, in sequence. Last year it was a one way train; going only towards the bottom of the table. This year the train appeared going the other way but seems to be returning back to 2008 path.

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