This is what happens

It always happens that the team that gives more signals of thrashing its opposition in crucial stages of a tournament gets thrashed itself. For instance, one can go through the South African episode in world cups between 1992 and 1999. If anyone calls South Africa as chokers, then here it is; Australia did everything right in the world T20 tournament 2010 only to lose to England in the finals of the same. So was Sri Lanka in the 2009 edition of the World T20 tournament and Pakistan in 2007. This has been the case many times and not once or twice.

I was just thinking about My world this moment before the final match of the champions league T20 tournament between Mumbai Indians and RCB. Rather than going through some other games,why don't we recollect what happened to Mumbai Indians in IPL 2010 when Mumbai were favorites to win the title any finally lost to Chennai? This time, the Royal Challengers Bangalore happened to be the culprit with them having a three successive 200+ total, once batting first and twice batting second. Every time the RCB took the crease, a batting record was rewritten. I just cannot what are these matches made up of?

Coming to the match, needless to be said, the pitch was a bowler's paradise regarding which Harbhajan Singh would be the best person to tell who could bowl successive balls of the century millennium. Luckily or unluckily, nobody got bowled in that fashion. But, the blame should completely go to the RCB team who very well knew what the Chepauk pitch was like. Meanwhile, Mumbai Indians were somewhat a lucky team to have played on that pitch a day before in the second semi-finals against Somerset. That match happened to be a practice match for Mumbai before heading to the finals.

Likewise, the Royal Challengers Bangalore played on a pitch which was dead opposite of the Chennai pitch which made them pay the price. Secondly, the toss was a trump card which happened to be on Mumbai's side when they elected to bat first on a track where any total is defendable. However,anybody who saw the match would have seen the RCB batsmen belting the Mumbai bowlers until the tenth over when suddenly things stared to change. In the end, Lasith Malinga got his due when he became the highest wicket taker in a T20 tournament for the 2^nd time after the IPL2011.

Result comes as expected

Well as all of us (or at least most of us) expected, the result of yesterday's match between the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Mumbai Indians ended as per plan which relied on Chris Gayle. We have repeatedly on our blog cited the chances of the Royal Challengers Bangalore in case Gayle is able to continue or not. If Gayle could keep up his momentum then the RCB win or else no. Exactly the same happened when Gayle scored 89 runs to demilitarize the Mumbai Indians whose lone satisfaction was Sachin Tendulkar's 40 runs which was the highest any Mumbai batsmen could score.

Added to Chris Gayle, there was Mayank Agarwal and AB deVilliars who supported Gayle in his big hitting. In fact, it was Chris Gayle who allowed Mayank Agarwal to relax by taking most of the responsibility on his shoulders. Of course, AB deVilliars came after Gayle was dismissed. By then, he had scored 89 runs at the rate of almost two runs for every ball he faced. There can be no words that can praise Chris Gayle at the moment. If Gayle's devastating batting was one way, there were confused bowlers from Mumbai side. Sachin Tendulkar didn't take the risk of trying another bowler.

As usual, Lasith Malinga was the strike bowler for the Mumbai Indians who though didn't take any wicket could contain runs when his stats suggest that Malinga was the least expensive bowlers who gave away runs at the rate of 6.00 runs an opver from his quota of 4 overs. Sachin Tendulkar made a mistake by handing the ball to Rohith Sharma who went for 14 runs his lone over. With someone like Gayle striking at his best, this was something uncalled for. Whatever, Mumbai Indians had nothing to fear about because a defeat was always on the cards for them.

It was just fascinating to see Sachin Tendulkar trying too many things to settle scores with Gayle's team, one of which was bringing in Harbhajan Singh at number 3 after Bizzard got out. Of course, Harbhajan Singh had a promising start when he hit one huge six outside the ground off the bowling of Mithun, three deliveries after striking a boundary of the same bowler. But, i the end all that he could manage was a mere 13 runs. That was the first six of the Mumbai Indians and the next one came off the bat of Lasith Malinga who was in at number 10.

T-Shirt Number Working Perfectly For Anil Kumble

Both the Mumbai Indians and the Royal Challengers had their lat chance of making it to the last four which includes a lot of ifs and buts. But, the most important thing for both the teams is to ensure that they do not lose matches anymore. Well, the Mumbai Indians were a bit unlucky when they had to draw a point in one of their earlier games. At the same time, they were reluctant in defending a decent target against the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the same when they could not chase a small target against the Kings XI Punjab.

On the other hand, the Royal Challengers Bangalore never played upto their expectations and the exit of Kevin Pietersen paved the way for Anil Kumble to take over the captaincy. It looked for a while that the number games were working for Anil Kumble. A couple of days back, I had written a post regarding the action of the number on the back of Anil Kumble's T Shirt. The number ensured a win against the Mumbai Indians and the Kings Xi Punjab from a nowhere situation. There I had also cited the result of a match as a result of change in the T-Shirt number. And it exactly happened the way I thought it to be.

The RCB lost the match against the Mumbai Indians which meant the exactly opposite of what happened in their earlier meeting. So, they next go to meet the KKR who are at the bottom of the table. And losing to the hands of the KKR would prove too costly for the RCD though a loss might not be of much importance for the KKR. The RCB have won their last encounter with the KKR. So, it would be a bit wise if Kumble revert back to number 8 behind his T-Shirt to avoid any complications. May be this time also the RCB might end up victorious for, even in the previous game against the KKR, Kumble's number read 37 and not 8. So, a different result might not be witnessed.

Coming to the match between the Mumbai Indians and the RCB, it was really difficult to tell whether the pitch favored the bowlers, owing to which the MI batsmen played cautiously by not losing wickets. The MI lost only 2 wickets and didn't even post a big total and whats more? They won the match at the end of the day. Had Harbhajan been sent at number 2, 20 more runs might have been added to the MI total. Much to the surprise, Anil Kumble was rated second in the match as far as his bowling figures were considered. After this particular match, the MI are just a step ahead compared to the RCB and are a step behind w.r.t the Kings XI. If any one or both the MI as well as the RCB have to make it the semis, in addition to them winning, they have to ensure that none of the teams win anymore games. At the moment, only the KKR are found to co-operate.