Monday 25 April 2011

Deccan Chargers slinged!

Well, the two players who have been any franchise's bargain in this year's IPL is no doubt Chris Gayle who was bagged by the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the second one is Lasith Malinga whose devastating spells were evident for the second time yesterday in the match against the Deccan Chargers on their home ground. Not even Sachin Tendulkar has been the pick of the players in this year's IPL. With that apart, in the game between the Mumbai Indians and Deccan Chargers, Lasith Malinga was outstanding needless to be said. This was not because he scalped 3 wickets from the Deccan Chargers.

If one can take some pains and go through the scorecard, not only did Lasith malinga scalp three wickets from the Deccan Chargers' side but also had them single handed. Two of his three wickets had the batsmen bowled while the third batsmen was caught and bowled by Lasith Malinga seeing that Malinga gets no help from any of the fielders or the wicket keeper. Added to that, Malinga had the Deccan Chargers' batsman-Cameron White run out. This brings down four wickets from the Deccan Chargers side by Lasith Malinga alone meaning Lasith Malinga has 50% of the Hyderabad wickets.

Moving away temporarily from Lasith Malinga, one can see from the scorecard that the Deccan Chargers used just five bowlers to bowl their full quota of 4 overs without opting for any other option. This always becomes the stepping stone for a loss by a team which has no guts to experiment with their bowlers. I have cited teams bringing in 7 to 8 bowlers when the going gets tough but, that is not any sort of criticism whatsoever. Though the playing XI of the Deccan Chargers lacks any well known bowlers, Barath Chilipi and Ravi Teja might have been worth a trial.

Similar to bowling, more batsmen making it to the crease means more pressure on the batting team and that was evident when all batsmen from the Deccan Chargers were found making it to the crease. One has to wonder why the word "home team" keeps on making rounds with most of the time in this IPL, it has been the home team that succumbs to pressure no matter what. The list is dominated by Delhi and Hyderabad to a greater extent. If the bowling of the Deccan Chargers brings in worries, so does their batting. If not for Sangakkara, no other batsman is found to hit the headlines for the right reasons.

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