Dare to chase 198!

Well needless to be said, whenever a team scores 198 on the board, it is well understood that majority of the bets would fall in favor of that particular team. Any something more is that majority of the times that particular team wins the contest and yesterday was no different when the Deccan Chargers simply crushed the Kings XI Punjab by 82 runs at Dharamsala. Something more special would be that someone like Shikar Dhawan made his presence count in the playing XI. Until then, Shikar Dhawan was there in the team just because the rules of the tournament had forced his inclusion.

As all of us know, there is a restriction on the number of foreign players that a team can have in the playing eleven and Shikar Dhawan being an Indian makes his move faster into the playing in the XI member squad. Now, anybody who would have thought of dropping Shikar Dhawan upon the slightest of all opportunities will have to think many times I suppose. However, in addition to Dhawan, there was Ravi Teja who became another master piece in the IPL scoring 60 when until then all he was expected to was to strike the ball blindly to gain some extra runs.

The tough job of laying a foundation to their team is held by experienced people like Adam Gilchrist, Paul Valthaty, Chris Gayle etc and someone like Ravi Teja is expected to just continue the good work initiated by them. In case the top order fails, the middle order is bound to fail majority of the time. Coming to the match, two batsmen were more than enough to belt the bowling of the Kings XI Punjab. In the Kings XI side, if not for Adam Gilchrist, no other batsmen stood up to the occasion. The pitch was a batsman's paradise which is evident from the scorecard.

However, in addition to Shikar Dhawan and Ravi Teja, there was Amit Mishra who once again had a magical spell scalping 4 wickets giving away just 9 runs from his quota of 4 overs at 2.25 runs an over that included one over maiden as well. In my opinion, it should have been Amit Mishra who should have been awarded the man of the match and not Shikar Dhawan. But, it looks like the organisers of the tournament hardly cast their eyes on bowling department and are focused on the batting department alone. Restricting someone like Gilchrist, Shaun Marsh etc is tougher than belting some Bhargav Bhatt and Piyush Chawla.

Ganguly scores a Naught

This would be the match for all Ganguly crazy fans who would have been delighted by the return of the King and secondly for getting out for a naught in his second match for the Pune Warriors. However, it is not all about Ganguly in the game between Pune Warriors and Deccan Chargers. There were ten other players leaving Ganguly who could have got the job done for the Pune Warriors. But, all they could manage was a mere 136 runs which had chances of being chased down with minimum effort. But, the Deccan Chargers needed more than minimum effort to reach that target.

One thing for which the Pune Warriors need a pat on their back would be because they didn't lose all their ten wickets by saving one wicket toward the end of their innings. Some reconsideration needs in the Decan Chargers' captain giving the ball to J P Duminy when Ishanth Sharma could have been given another over who was not only a major strike bowler but also one among the bowlers who maintained a decent economy of 6.33 though not enough. Very rarely does a bowler end up with an over maiden in a T20 game and Amit Mishra was the lucky one in this regard.

In the Pune Warriors' innings, the highest individual score came from the blades of Mitchell Marsh who batted at number 8. And, may be because of his strokeplay, the Pune Warriors crossed the hundred run mark. One can imagine the fate of a team which has to rely on a number 8 batsmen to complete the innings. If that was all about the Pune Warriors, the Deccan Chargers were no less when it came to showing a dismal performance when they had to wait until the last over to score than winning run. A band of Yuvraj Singh, Ganguly, Uttappa and Jesse Ryder could only fill in the vacancies.

With limited resources, the Deccan Chargers did more than what was expected from them. The big names from the Deccan Chargers include Sangakkara, Dhawan and Duminy. But, that much was more than enough to chase down 136 successfully. Whatsoever, this is not the end of the roads for both teams and according to me, both teams lost when it comes to performing up to a certain level. But, as far as the rules of the game go, there can be only one winner at the most and that happened to be the Deccan Chargers. There are much more games to come.

Deccan Chargers slinged!

Well, the two players who have been any franchise's bargain in this year's IPL is no doubt Chris Gayle who was bagged by the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the second one is Lasith Malinga whose devastating spells were evident for the second time yesterday in the match against the Deccan Chargers on their home ground. Not even Sachin Tendulkar has been the pick of the players in this year's IPL. With that apart, in the game between the Mumbai Indians and Deccan Chargers, Lasith Malinga was outstanding needless to be said. This was not because he scalped 3 wickets from the Deccan Chargers.

If one can take some pains and go through the scorecard, not only did Lasith malinga scalp three wickets from the Deccan Chargers' side but also had them single handed. Two of his three wickets had the batsmen bowled while the third batsmen was caught and bowled by Lasith Malinga seeing that Malinga gets no help from any of the fielders or the wicket keeper. Added to that, Malinga had the Deccan Chargers' batsman-Cameron White run out. This brings down four wickets from the Deccan Chargers side by Lasith Malinga alone meaning Lasith Malinga has 50% of the Hyderabad wickets.

Moving away temporarily from Lasith Malinga, one can see from the scorecard that the Deccan Chargers used just five bowlers to bowl their full quota of 4 overs without opting for any other option. This always becomes the stepping stone for a loss by a team which has no guts to experiment with their bowlers. I have cited teams bringing in 7 to 8 bowlers when the going gets tough but, that is not any sort of criticism whatsoever. Though the playing XI of the Deccan Chargers lacks any well known bowlers, Barath Chilipi and Ravi Teja might have been worth a trial.

Similar to bowling, more batsmen making it to the crease means more pressure on the batting team and that was evident when all batsmen from the Deccan Chargers were found making it to the crease. One has to wonder why the word "home team" keeps on making rounds with most of the time in this IPL, it has been the home team that succumbs to pressure no matter what. The list is dominated by Delhi and Hyderabad to a greater extent. If the bowling of the Deccan Chargers brings in worries, so does their batting. If not for Sangakkara, no other batsman is found to hit the headlines for the right reasons.

Bangladesh fail to average 4 an over

Well it is all the more expected that India would surely win the test against Bangladesh no matter what the initial performance in the early days of the test match had to say. The only question whose answer had to be awaited until the end of the 5th day was: By how many runs or wicket would India win the match and conversely speaking, by how many runs or wickets would Bangladesh lose? And, the answer to this question was India won the match by 113 runs or Bangladesh lost the match by 113 runs. And, Sachin Tendulkar was awarded the man of the match.

But, still, victory didn't come so easy for team India, who struggled to get every Bangladeshi batsmen out after he threatened to have been set well and ready for the Indian challenge. Bangladesh did well to pile up a total which was just more than 300 runs which was less compared to the total of 413 that they needed to win the match but more compared to what was expected out of them. Once again, the Bangladeshi opener scored a half century and there was a Bangladeshi batsman who score century for his team. This was more than enough for them to draw some appreciation.

No one might congratulate Sachin Tendulkar for not only scoring yet another century in test cricket but also pulling his team yet another time from the jaws of a draw, against Bangladesh which would be as good as a loss for any team barring West Indies in today's cricket. Similarly, even Zaheer Khan doesn't deserve any sort of applause for doing the same with the ball what Sachin Tendulkar managed with the bat for, the caliber that Bangladesh stands in today's cricketing world is well in front. It was not Sachin Tendulkar's brilliant hundred but it was a below par performance from the rest of the Indian batsmen.

So was the case regarding India's bowling where Sreesanth had no share of wickets. If in the second innings of India's batting, Amit Mishra's score was more than Dravid's and Sachin's, Virender Sehwag's bowling performance was better than Sreesanth's when Sehwag was able to pick up on wicket when he got the opener - Tamim Iqbal out after he score 52 runs and was threatening to take advantage of India underestimating his team. That was an important wicket as was Amit Mishra's innings that saw India having a 2^nd wicket partnership of 98 runs in the 2^nd innings with Gautam Gambhir.