Chennai Super kings successfully defended a below par score 142 against Sahara Pune Warriors. But this is how it started :)
So, here we have both teams sitting on 4 points each ( but having played only 4 games each, so not to worry lots of action to come)… very crucial game for both in the tournament right now, which took place in Chennai which commanded a great deal of extra effort from the players to hold their breathes in the ridiculously humid temperatures. Pune Warrior’s skipper Yuvi won the toss and elected to field after his team’s poor performance batting front up. Now , it is true the pitch conditions hardly matter when a game of 40 overs is played, it all depends on who goes out there and do what they have to do, well. Still I felt yuvi would have been better of electing to bat, with such a disciplined line up of bowlers at his dispense, they would have been better off bowling second. Nevertheless, MS Dhoni was not displeased to be batting first.
M.Vijay and M.Hussey gave the CSK fans a lot to cheer for with a splendid start, classic shot play and intelligent play. Vijay in mood to score off boundaries alone was a delight to watch while Hussey had quite a bit of luck on the field and kept the scoreboard ticking with timely chipping which ran back to the third man region to boundaries. CSK were sitting good @ 60 for no loss at 8.2 overs when yuvi dropped a tough catch of Hussey thus continuing Mr. Cricket lucky spell in the game. It took Pune’s A. Thomas’s glorious over to get Pune back into the game. An excellent piece of body line bowling to Vijay got the Chennai batsman back to the pavilion in the second ball quickly followed by S.Raina who was deceived by an excellent Yorker which ripped the stumps while Raina was attempting an ambitious over drive. The wicket smashing behind the batsmen is truly the best way for a bowler to get a wicket!
Suddenly the once well placed CSK are sitting at 66/2 in 10 overs (the lowest score by CSK in the first 10 overs in IPL 4). Here we had the captains showdown, Yuvi trying his hand at the ball while Dhoni mercilessly wacked the ball in his crude powerful way out of the park many a times. Dhoni & Hussey did well to get CSK to 85/2 @ 13 overs. Hussey reached the coveted 50 around the 15ish over. Soon followed by the skipper getting out in attempt of a shot that never was at 26 of 21 balls. At 17.2 overs Manish Pandey took a splendid catch at the boundary to rid off Hussey after scoring 61runs. The rest of the CSK line up quickly collapsed one after the other to J.Taylor ( of W.I) and none but Badrinath with a few boundaries towards the end could really make any improvements to the Chennai’s score. CSK ended up with a so-so score of 142/6. It was a very disciplined effort by the Pune bowlers, living up to their fame for being the most economical bowlers of the tournament.
2nd innings:
J.Ryder & M.Mishra opened for the Pune Warriors. Ryder went off to his typical blistering start with a good number of delightful strokes to the boundary. A. Morkel once again struck and was instrumental in getting early breakthroughs for Chennai. Mishra departed for 9 while Ryder still went Bang Bang Bang!!! It took an amazing bowl by Ashwin to outsmart the Kiwi who was stumped and got Chennai back into the game. Here we were at 4 overs 27/2, when M.Pandey came in (after quite some time! LOTS of pressure). We saw a couple of shots from the bat of Pandey, but from the word go it was very evident that he was extremely shaky and pressurizing himself. (Dude, relax!) If only he had survived a few overs he might have taken the game away from Chennai. It didn’t happen. He guided the ball to the stumps in an effort to drive it to third man for a boundary. In less than 2 seconds another former RCB player R.Uthappa departed thanks to terrible shot selection for a duck.
Yuvi was the only player from Pune who showed some or any nerves in this game. It was clear that it was he who would have to steer Pune to victory. With a mountain load over his shoulder and the blistering Chennai heat all over him, he was looking great while Pune sought 78 from 58 balls (Remember this was the same ground he scored his only world cup century). Yuvi’s 58 off 36 balls looked like the start of a fine innings which will win Pune the game but alas no one seemed to be able to stand at the other end for more than an over to some fine bowling by Chennai’s Ashwin and Bollinger and some sensational fielding effort by the team esp.Jakati. all the efforts paid off when Jakati took a superb catch to rid Yuvi and thus Pune’s hope of the game. After Yuvi nothing worth mention happened with the Pune team’s chase as they swindled down to 33 off 8 to 30 off 6 till it was all over and CSK won the game by 25 glorious runs. Chennai took this clash home quite easily. M.Hussey was declared man of the match amongst many deserving candidates. ( which was pretty disappointing, considering it was bowlers like Ashwin, Bollinger or even Jakati who won the match for Chennai & that Hussey scored more than half his runs behind the wicket and had at least 3 lives awarded by the Pune players.)
Well, it was Hussey and CSK’s day and all is well that ends well and Chennai move higher up the points table.
IPL 4 Points Table and Analysis of how it happened Here
A) Was Chennai too good for Pune or B) Pune gave up the match
No comments:
Post a Comment