Time to rejoice. Real good performance by FI in the first season. Keep up the good work! We will be praying you earn some points this year itself!
Archive for April 29, 2008
Players leaving the IPL
Was thinking of writing a blog when I found this comprehensive post.
My analysis:
RCB: Bowling attack looks good now with Steyn , ZK and Pravin K. Will miss Taylor and Chanderpaul as already short of firepower.
CSK: Will sorely miss batting of Hussey and Hayden. Batting responsibility will shift on Patel, Dhoni, Raina and Badrinath. Bowling department will be strengthened by Ntini and Morkel. Fleming is here to stay.
DD: Not much difference. Existing players are performing. Daniel Vettori is leaving who did not play.
DC: One aggressive player gone (Symmo), one in (Gibbs). No difference. Gilly will be of course playing the entire series.
RR: Complete Strengthening of already emerging fine team. All incoming players (Smith, Y.Khan, Tanvir, Mascerenhas) are exciting.
KKR: Will be hit by Gayle and McCullum leaving. Butt will fill in as opener. Good thing Ponting is going. He was not playing well and they were not affording keeping him out.
KXI: Will miss Lee, and Katich who was MoM in last game.
MI: Exit of allrounder Dwayne Bravo will hit their team composition later in the season.
IPL Match Review: Chennai Vs Royal Challengers
“Bash of the South” as Ajay Jadeja was continuously referring to, took place yesterday at the home venue of the Royal Challengers i.e Chinnaswamy Stadium. Bangalore. With the Superkings being unbeaten yet, they were always the favorites going into the match. MS won the toss and chose to bat first on a decent batting pitch. However, the Royal Challengers were not going to give away the match so easily. Boosted by the inclusion of Dale Steyn, their pace attack looked more than ominous with Pravin Kumar and Zaheer Khan. The first 5 overs yielded just 22 runs for CSK with the loss of Hayden’s wicket. The consolidation and semi-acceleration was provided by Raina (28 off 17) with Hussey playing anchor role (47 off 38). CSK managed to reach 100-3 in 15 overs. And just when it seemed that RCB had done a brilliant job, Dhoni decided to script a story of his own. He fired 65 off 30 balls, after a slow start even milking 24 off a single over from Steyn. Eventually CSK ended at 178-5 losing Dhoni and Hussey off the lost two balls of their innings. They had amassed 78 runs off the last 5 overs, the same as in the middle 10! That was some acceleration!
The lost ground was easily recovered by Ross Taylor (53 off 34) and the unlikely hero W. Jaffer (50 off 33) for RCB as they smashed the Superkings’ bowling to all parts of the ground (One six from Taylor) measured 119m!). RCB raced to 127-2 in just 14 overs. Again Dhoni to the rescue. With quick bowling changes and good field placing, he inspired a collapse. His bowlers responded (Amarnath and Sharma) and so did his fielders (2 run outs). RCB slumped from a match winning 127-2 in 14 overs to 149-7 in 17.2 ov. After that it was almost over. CSK had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and held on to their superb unbeaten record leaving the Royal Challengers to despair.
With this victory, Superkings proved that they did not rely only on their international players. They had what it took to win even without them. A swashbuckling innings from Dhoni was refreshing and evoked memoirs of his former self. Nobody shall henceforth question his abilities to score quickly as captain.
