Dare to chase 198!

Well needless to be said, whenever a team scores 198 on the board, it is well understood that majority of the bets would fall in favor of that particular team. Any something more is that majority of the times that particular team wins the contest and yesterday was no different when the Deccan Chargers simply crushed the Kings XI Punjab by 82 runs at Dharamsala. Something more special would be that someone like Shikar Dhawan made his presence count in the playing XI. Until then, Shikar Dhawan was there in the team just because the rules of the tournament had forced his inclusion.

As all of us know, there is a restriction on the number of foreign players that a team can have in the playing eleven and Shikar Dhawan being an Indian makes his move faster into the playing in the XI member squad. Now, anybody who would have thought of dropping Shikar Dhawan upon the slightest of all opportunities will have to think many times I suppose. However, in addition to Dhawan, there was Ravi Teja who became another master piece in the IPL scoring 60 when until then all he was expected to was to strike the ball blindly to gain some extra runs.

The tough job of laying a foundation to their team is held by experienced people like Adam Gilchrist, Paul Valthaty, Chris Gayle etc and someone like Ravi Teja is expected to just continue the good work initiated by them. In case the top order fails, the middle order is bound to fail majority of the time. Coming to the match, two batsmen were more than enough to belt the bowling of the Kings XI Punjab. In the Kings XI side, if not for Adam Gilchrist, no other batsmen stood up to the occasion. The pitch was a batsman's paradise which is evident from the scorecard.

However, in addition to Shikar Dhawan and Ravi Teja, there was Amit Mishra who once again had a magical spell scalping 4 wickets giving away just 9 runs from his quota of 4 overs at 2.25 runs an over that included one over maiden as well. In my opinion, it should have been Amit Mishra who should have been awarded the man of the match and not Shikar Dhawan. But, it looks like the organisers of the tournament hardly cast their eyes on bowling department and are focused on the batting department alone. Restricting someone like Gilchrist, Shaun Marsh etc is tougher than belting some Bhargav Bhatt and Piyush Chawla.