Thursday 26 May 2011

Kolkata get what they deserved

Finally as all would have expected, the Kolkata Knight Riders ended their IPL stint yesterday by losing to the Mumbai Indians, which was their last chance to prove a point in the tournament. One has to anyway congratulate the Kolkata Knight Riders for coming this far when their performances in the past three editions of the tournament were haphazard. Despite the presence of big guns like Sourav Ganguly, Ricky Ponting, Brendon McCullum and others, they ended at the bottom of the table in the past three editions of the tournament. This time there were more teams compared to the previous editions.

A loss against one team could be made up in their next game. And, may be that was the reason why the Kolkata made it count unlike last three editions. On the other hand, there was a re-auction of the players which meant another chance for the franchisee to have their bid on a player whom they think is a promising one. This time Kolkata had promising players like Gambhir, Kallis, Yousuf Pathan and Brett Lee to name a few. However, all that could help them was to place them fourth in the points table which was a jump from position No.8 last time.

Scorecard suggests there were the top order of the KKR failed miserably with hardly any contributions from Gambhir, Kallis, Goswami and Tiwary. So was the case regarding Yousuf Pathan and Shakib Al Hasan. It was fascinating to see one player from Holland and the other from Bangladesh having a major share in the Kolkata's batting with Ryan ten Doeschate top scoring with 70 and Shakib Al Hasan scoring 26. The second highest run getter in last year's IPL should learn from the player where cricket has taken a backseat. The aforementioned players didn't disappoint their franchisee who bid a huge sum on them.

Coming to the Mumbai Indians' batting, it was as though Aiden Craig Blizzard was introducing himself when stats shows that he never played international cricket at all and more over neither he could be thought to represent the same in years to come. The opening batsmen top scored with 51 runs off 30 balls at a decent strike rate of 170. One can see the route taken by KKR who went in for 7 of their bowlers to try something to stop the Mumbai Indians from scoring. But, who on earth cares for those when James Franklin was trying to undo the damage which he did with the ball?

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