A mis-match at Eden Gardens

Well what can be said about the shortest version of the game being truncated to half of its size and that too when one innings happens to be over? One has to forget the saying that all is well that ends well when the Chennai Superkings who would have lost otherwise as well happened to gain sympathy for ending up on the losing side due to the D-L method. A score of 115 on the board can hardly be defended and has been proved to be chased down on majority of the occasions. And, Kolkata is an upcoming team in this year's IPL.

There was an approach as though it was a one day game if the scorecard of the Chennai Superkings is considered. Neither did they lose wickets at regular intervals nor did they put up a huge score on the board to compensate for their ducking. There was one player in the Chennai side who scored a half century when Subramanium Badrinath scored a 41 ball 54 aided with three hits to the fence and two outside the ground. Had there been losses of wickets, that would have seen Dhoni getting into the rescue act followed by Wriddhiman Saha and Morkel.

Very rarely does a match total happens to be reduced to exactly half both in terms of the runs needed to be chased as well as the number of balls needed to secure a win. Yesterday, at Kolkata, the revised target for the Knight Riders happened to be 52 runs from 10 overs which initially was 115 runs from 20 overs. A funny aspect of the D-L method is that the team batting second wins by so many runs which is not possible in regular games or uninterrupted ones. The result might have been Kolkata won the game by 10 wickets instead of 10 runs.

Iqbal Abdulla was awarded the man of the match for his outstanding efforts of 1/15 from 4 overs by blind people who could not see or realize Brett Lee's efforts of 0/8 off his four overs at just 2 runs an over. Even in that partly total of 114, there was a bowler in Jaidev Unadkat who gave away runs at the rate of 11 runs an over from the only over which he bowled. The Kolkata Knight Riders innings saw no sixes being scored unlike the Chennai innings which saw two of them. Had Badrinath been adjudged the man of the match, that would not have been a bad choice.

Kolkata too fast to prove

Well just some 24 hours back I had written about Kolkata Knight Riders' chance in this year's Indian Premier League as they along with the Kings XI Punjab are the only team to make their presence felt in the tournament. But, in the very first encounter with the Chennai Super Kings, Kolkata Knight Riders lost to the defending champions by 2 runs. Well, the match need not be pardoned saying the small margin of victory for the CSKs will not last for long in people's minds. This is neither test nor one day cricket for the margin to be considered to be that small.

The scorecard reveals the team work by the Chennai Super Kings where all batsmen who took to the crease did his little bit to the score eventually ending at 153. This was too less compared to the standards of a T20 game. A total below 180 in a T20 game is as good as some 250 total in a one day game which in today's cricket stands nowhere. A run rate of 9.0 an over seems to be ideal in a T20 game no matter what. The total set up by the Chennai Super Kings against Kolkata Knight Riders stood nowhere for a team with Gambhir to chase.

One has to reason out for Gambhir coming in at number 6 when his usual position being number 1 or 2 in the batting line up. I just went sick seeing Jacques Kallis batting the same way as he plays in test cricket or a one day international. A slow and steady innings in a T20 game is the last thing that would be preferred. No matter that he got to the second half century of the match after some Anirudh scored a match winning 64. Of course, the blame is not completely on Kallis alone but on the entire Kolkata team.

Only 4 batsmen took to the crease from the Chennai Super Kings side with batsmen like Badrinath and Ashwin not making to make it to the crease. And, Morne Morkel and Scott Styris couldn't stay there for long playing just 11 balls in between them. This has been the pity of a T20 game with most of the time taken to concentrate and settle down. This time also, most of the time and overs were taken by Anirudh, Raina and Dhoni making it a perfectly Indian combo. But, Kolkata Knight Riders' efforts needs to be praised for coming so close to the game when otherwise they were way behind.