A World T20 Final Like Situation

Well one can imagine the teams that made it to the finals of the inaugural T20 world cup that was held in South Africa a couple of years back. The teams who made it there were India and Pakistan, the same two teams who were eliminated from the earlier world cup the same year in the Caribbean earlier that year after their losses at the hands of minnows. Pakistan lost the match to Ireland and India on the other hand lost their match to Bangladesh, thus disappointing the fans and the tournament on the whole who were deprived of a major challenge.

However, it was the same two teams out there who made it to the finals of the inaugural T20 world cup. And this time too, in the second edition of the Indian Premier League, the venue is once again South Africa and, the teams who have entered the finals of the IPL 1 namely, the Deccan Chargers and the Royal Challengers Bangalore had finished at the bottom of the points table in the last and the first edition of the Indian Premier League in 2008. Deccan Chargers ended up at the bottom most and they were followed by the Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Anyway, coming to the semi final match between the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Chennai Super Kings it was a terrible bowling effort from the bowlers of the RCB, for, it was the bowlers who laid the foundation for the victory by restricting the CSKs for a comparitively low total of 146. The CSK at one stage were at 102/2 at the end of the 13th over. Meaning only 44 runs were scored from the remaining 7 overs at a run rate of just above 6 an over. Anil Kumble won the toss and put the CSKs to bat, with the fact weel in his mind that the pitch would suit the batsmen and chasing a decent total on this track would not a challenging.

Unfortunately, the man of the match was handed over to Manish Pandey who just exctracted something out of the pitch. My man of the match would be Vander Merwe or Vinay Kumar, because they did something for which the pitch never gave them any sort of assistance. The CSKs lost just 5 wickets, once again doing the mistake what the KKR did throughout the series. There was Gony, Muralitharan (if his experience is to be taken) and Balaji who could have added 20 more runs to the CSK total had the earlier batsmen gone in for some risks. Had this been done, the run rate required would have been around 8 an over. And the match was all over after the CSK innings. The only question left unanswered was by how many wickets would the RCB emerge victorious?

The RCB indeed need a pat on their back for making it not only to the semis but also to the finals when they were on the cards to be the first team to be out of the tournament until the captaincy was taken care of Kumble. Congrats Anil!!!