Defend 118!

Well the moment a team scores 118, anybody who would have had his bet on that particular team would have to leave the stadium or switch off his television sets. And may be that was what fans of Pune Warriors who would have bet their money on that team been doing yesterday after they crashed to a 7 wicket loss at the hands of the Kolkata Knight Riders. At such a run rate, the Pune Warriors couldn't even manage to win a 50 over match let alone a 20 over one. Very rarely does a team win matches defending 118.

The highest individual score happened to be from the blades of Yuvraj Singh who scored 24 which only he could boast of. One can just consider Yuvraj Singh as a topper among failures. I just cannot understand why Kolkata Knight Riders could not get the Pune Warriors all out. There were three more wickets left in the Pune Warriors' kitty. It is not always that the win or loss that matters but the way a match has been won or lost needless to be said. Pune Warriors were as though they just wanted to convince their fans saying that they were playing for the 1^st time.

Pune Warriors might have been playing for the first time in the IPL but certainly, Yuvraj Singh, Sourav Ganguly, Jesse Ryder etc have featured in all three previous editions of the tournament. This is Sourav Ganguly's third match in the IPL and this has been his second under rated performance after scoring a naught in the game against Deccan Chargers. One has to definitely appreciate the efforts of the Kolkata captain who bought in 8 of his bowlers knowing that the Pune Warriors were at their knees. The entire Pune Warriors' innings consisted of just one six from the blades of Ganguly.

Whatever, Sourav Ganguly would have been a happy man despite the results of the game because, the team which eventually won was Ganguly's home team while had the Pune Warriors won, that would be the team which Ganguly is now representing. The total of 118 hardly requires any team work where finishing the job is more of a formality than any sort of achievement. Still, there was Gautam Gambhir who scored the lone half century of the match aided with an all round performance by Yousuf Pathan who grabbed 2 wickets and then went on to score the winning runs for his team.