Last time when South Australia played their match against Warriors, on one hand South Australians were first punched everywhere when by the Warriors' batsmen for 171 and then their batsmen were restricted to just 121. Now, the same South Australian team happened to score a mammoth total of 188 against the Kolkata Knight Riders at Hyderabad yesterday. There can hardly be any question of a team chasing the total and needless to be said, Kolkata lost the match by 19 runs. Well, that was too low a margin to achieve victory. The margin of victory should have been atleast 51 runs like it was the case for Warriors.Whatever, I am not the person to predict or rather dictate that by how much margin should a team win a match. Coming to the match, it was not a one man show like it was in the match between Warriors and South Australia where all most of the scoring was done by JJ Smuts who scored 88. This time there was contribution from Michael Klinger, Daniel Harris, Callum Ferguson and Daniel Christian with Ferguson's 70 being the highlight to bring the team total to 188. The only batsman who disappointed was Tom Cooper who got out scoring just a single.As usual, the captain of the Kolkata Knight Riders namely Gautam Gambhir stuck to the age old theory having four of his bowlers bowl their full quota of 4 overs with Laxmipathy Balaji falling one over short. Trying to shift from Balaji who gave away runs at 9.00 runs an over, Gambhir turned to Rajat Bhatia who was even more intelligent and gave away 10.00 runs from his only over. Still, that was better than 10.75 runs an over given by Yousuf Pathan. Adding to the excitement, there was equal contribution from most of the batsmen of Kolkata but none of them were highlights.The top scorer from Kolkata happened to be Manoj Tiwary who had 40 runs to his credit. In a game of cricket, in addition to team work, there should be regular partnerships and one man should take complete responsibility of his team in order to be victorious. Whatever, Kolkata Knight Riders came close to the target which will stop critics from pointing their fingers towards them. There were back to back wickets for Kolkata which halted their advance in the game when Ryan ten Doeschate and Lee got out in 18.2 and 18.4 over respectively. Or else, Bhatia had a great going with 21 runs at number 10.
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.
Well it would not be a surprise for any team to have pulled off a stunning win against any team in T20 games. Mumbai Indians might have been the team that was on the top in the third edition of the Indian Premier League that was concluded some 5 months back. But, how can it consider itself comfortable with just 180 on board with 200+ totals being successfully chased down repeatedly. There should not be anything peculiar in any team that is found chasing 180 on board. Despite all odds, on fact to be noticed is that the Mumbai Indians' team didn't have even a single score above 50.Well, that is not an area of concern for either of the teams out there. At the end of the day it is who wins and who loses and South Australia have made the better of the day by beating the Mumbai Indians by 5 wickets rather deserving. Unlike the Mumbai Indians' inings, the South Australian team had their openers post individual scores in excess of 50 with Michael Klinger and Daniel Harris scoring 50 and 56 respectively. By the end, Daniel Harris was awarded the man of the match for scoring just 6 runs above his opening partner which can seem to be a race for that as well.There were no other contenders for the man of the match award with no bowler managing to take more than 2 wickets. Ali Murtaza and Lasith Malinga happened to top the bowling charts with two scalps against their names each with Aaron O'Brien doing the same for the South Australians. But these performances were not able to fetch either of the three the man of the match award with little coming from the willow and obviously the preference going to them. Despite a run rate of 9 an over, there were hardly any individual batting performances from both the teams.
