One scores and the rest support

Well in the beginning of the second stage of the champions league T20 tournament, there was a game where the Royal Challengers Bangalore put up a score of 173 on the board only to see the Warriors snatching the game away from them in the last ball of the innings. Yesterday, at Hyderabad, the same Warriors put up a score of 171 which was two runs less than what RCB had piled up a couple of days ago. But, that score was not only enough to confirm a victory for the Warriors but that happened rather convincingly with the margin being 51 runs.

This is one of the biggest margins of victory as far as a T20 game is considered. And this is the highest margin of victory in terms of runs in this competition. I am not questioning the credentials of entire Royal Challengers Bangalore or the Warriors. I just mentioned how two similar scores can make a huge difference in two different games for the same team. In the first innings where Warriors batted, there was a solid stand for them given by JJ Smuts who scored 88 runs at a rate of 135 runs for every 100 deliveries he faced.

Smuts was supported well by Colin Ingram and Mark Boucher both of whom scored in 30s. Neither of them got into any sort of big hitting and at the same time were not even ducking the ball unnecessarily. Two Daniels - Daniel Christian and Daniel Harris bowled superbly by not giving runs at will which was spoiled by their partners with Shaun Tait playing a major role in them. Shaun Tait was given to bowl 4 overs despite going in for over 13.00 runs an over. May be it was his international appearance that made the captain to go i for him to bowl 4 overs.

Looking at the score of 121 at which South Australia ended their innings, nothing needs to be said regarding them in particular. Rather than giving due credit to the Warriors' bowlers, one can blame the South Australian batsmen for not standing up to the mark and losing wickets at regular intervals. Michael Klinger had a good going but lacked support from Daniel Harris and Tom Cooper. Borgas, Christian and Ludeman tried to do something but failed after they started feeling the pressure with the required run rate mounting and with it the pressure as said. There was nothing tough for Warriors' bowlers to do with Smuts doing the job.