IPL 2 – Day 20 – Game 1 Rajasthan Royals drink RC cold
I have a doubt.
The name Royal Challengers – what does that denote? Does that denote Challengers who are Royal? Or it denotes people who challenge Royals?
Whatever be the case, Royal Challengers Bangalore were challenging Rajasthan Royals in the first match of Day 20 at SuperSport Park, Centurion, South Africa.
It promised to be an exciting game mainly because both Royal Challengers Bangalore and Rajasthan Royals were coming into the game each winning all their previous three matches. Additionally there was the excitement of watching two great leg spinners of not to distant past, Anil Kumble and Shane Warne matching wits on the field in their capacity as captains.
Warne won the toss once more and bowled the googly to Kumble to bat first making a happy Kumble (at losing the toss as he wanted to field first) sad.
Soon he was going to feel sadder as the same batsman who won the match for Royal Challengers Bangalore against Mumbai Indians batted making one think if the previous match was a dream.
Wickets were falling like nine, sorry, ten pins. Somehow, the Royal Challengers planned their innings so well that they did a perfect twenty – getting all out off the last ball of the twentieth over. None of their batsman crossed twenty runs. Rahul Dravid cooked a duck for his team to celebrate the arrival of his second child.
The new Kamran Khan of Rajasthan Royals, Amit Singh, was the tormentor in chief taking four Royal Challenger wickets giving away just 19 runs. This four wicket haul took his IPL tally to 7 got in exchange of just 28 runs given away in eight overs. Very impressive but already he has been reported for suspect action.
I fail to understand how the umpires are accepting the Lasith Malinga’s action who also seem to be chucking at times. In my opinion, a bowler with a round arm (slinging) action should be bigger suspect for throwing than a bowler with a high arm action. Let us only hope that Amit Singh’s career is not nipped in the bud due to this controversy. (One remedy for this is for Lalit Modi to announce that chucking is allowed in IPL; it will justify the presence of Baseball coaches even more. We have money power in the world of cricket. We can do anything!)
If I wrote here that the total of 105 posted by Royal Challengers Bangalore would be challenging for last year champions Rajasthan Royals it will become the most humorous sentence ever written by anyone in the blogosphere. And if Rajasthan Royals didn’t actually chase down that small total with wickets to spare they would have become the biggest jokers in the world.
Thankfully, I didn’t write that first sentence in the previous paragraph (and so this blog have to contend with being unfunny) and Rajasthan Royals didn’t find it hard to chase that total.
Getting back to the match, when Rajasthan Royals chased the target Naman Ojha took off from where he left in the previous game (though there were two innings played in between by opponent teams) to score a breezy fifty taking just 38 deliveries to reach the milestone, remaining unbeaten, pushing up his series average and helping Rajasthan Royals seal the match five overs ahead.
Thus, a renewed vigor shown by Royal Challengers Bangalore was subdued by Rajasthan Royals.
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