Thursday 28 April 2011

Just Yuvraj Singh for Pune

Well the rules of the game of cricket suggests that every team is supposed to have 11 players and may be that is the reason why ten out of the eleven players from the Pune Warriors side are seen making it to the squad with only Yuvraj Singh doing the talking with the bat. One can just have a look at the scorecard of yesterday's match between Pune Warriors and Chennai Superkings which obviously was won by the defending champions. There are the likes of Monish Mishra, Manish Pandey, Robin Uttappa etc who could have done a lot with the bat but didn't.

If not for Yuvraj Singh's 62, the next best performance was Robin Uttappa's 31 which was exactly half of what Yuvraj Singh could manage. Then comes Jesse Ryder's 19 and beyond that, the scores can only take the space on the page and nothing else. If the 62 runs scored by Yuvraj Singh is stripped from the scorecard of Pune Warriors, then the total of the same turn out to be 69 which is the total put up by the remaining 7 batsmen who made it to the crease and not to forget the 5 extra runs. That makes the total 69-5=64.

Had the remaining batsmen mentioned contributed up to their mark, then the scorecard would have read something different than what is the case. One can see Raina returning with one of the best bowling figures with the ball when he gave away runs at a rate of just 5 runs an over. Unfortunately, Raina was given one over short, when he deserved to bowl an extra over thus completing his quota of four overs. One can see three overs bowled maiden in the game with two of them being from the Pune Warriors and making it worse, the bowler who gave away the winning runs bowled one of them.

It would not be wrong to say that the overs bowled maiden by the Pune Warriors team was awarded by the Chennai Superkings for, the batsmen from the Chennai team showed no signs of feat which usually results in overs going without a run being scored. Needless to be said, the Chennai Superkings reached the target with 8 wickets to spare and just three balls remaining. Does this speak of the pressure the Chennai Superkings were facing during their run chase becomes a different question altogether. Eventually, 7 bowlers from the Pune Warriors side could not contain two batsmen from the Chenai superkings side.

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