In the end, there wasn’t much to choose from between the two sides, but as Andrew Symonds had remarked before the start of the game, the team that held its nerve better under pressure would be the one to make it through to embossing its name on the trophy. As it turned out, it was Symonds’ words of wisdom that came absolutely true, as his Deccan Chargers scraped through to a narrow, six-run victory over the Royal Challengers Bangalore!
It must be said that the game was there for the Royal Challengers to take at the half-way stage. A target of 144 was all that the team from Bangalore had to get to, and in this format of the game, it was a below-par score. Yet, the pressure of the situation and a track that could have been termed as a double-paced one, seemed to have got into the psyche of the batsmen as most of them froze when it really mattered.
It began with the early loss of Jacques Kallis, but the turning point for me during the inning was the manner in which the top-scorer for Bangalore in the previous two games – Manish Pandey – was kept away from the strike. So much so, that six overs into the inning, Pandey had faced only seven deliveries! His eighth saw him attempt to vent his frustration out, only managing to cut the Pragyan Ojha delivery to the wicket-keeper.
Reold van der Merwe provided a little comic relief amidst the tension that could was palpably visible around the stadium as he edged and nicked, danced and jumped and even dived at the non-striker’s stumps to have them flat. This is not to say that he did not perform well, in fact, outscoring his more illustrious team-mates with a 21-ball 32, but once he was stumped by Gilchrist, there wasn’t much in the form of aggression.
The rest capitulated to the guile of Ojha and some excellent fielding by the Chargers. Harmeet Singh, another rookie had been smashed for a couple of boundaries in his first over, also came back strongly to pick up a couple of wickets at crucial junctures; ending with 2/23 in the four overs. In between all this, it was a combination of some beautiful flight and spin, a few false strokes, and a very controlled medium-pace bowling to disallow the Royal Challengers to get away with a single partnership of note.
In the end, the 15 runs needed off six deliveries may have been possible with a few more wickets, but with the number ten batsman at the other end, there was only so much that Uthappa could do and the Chargers came out winners.
Earlier, the Royal Challengers Bangalore sprung a surprise by opening the attack with Kumble’s spin, and it proved to be a master-move, having Gilchrist bowled off the second delivery of the game. However, as with their batting, Bangalore lost a couple of junctures of the game during their time on the field. One was a sitter that Rahul Dravid, India’s and arguably, world’s best slip fielder today , dropped off the edge of Symonds. Taking cognizance of the fact that the wicket did not look too conducive for batting at that moment, the Symonds-bomb exploded and added another 28 runs in 16 deliveries, that included a momentum-inducing four boundaries and a six.
The other was the 15th over of the game, when the Chargers were struggling at 81/3, and the spinners having a stronghold over the batsman. Despite having batted from the first delivery of the inning, Gibbs was timing the ball as well as someone who had picked his bat after years in wilderness, and another tight over from Kumble could have sealed it for the Challengers.
Instead, Praveen Kumar was smacked around for 20 runs, in an over which also went on to become the costliest over of the game. If one were to use the tool of hindsight, and look at the margin of defeat, it definitely had a role to play. Gibbs carried his bat for an unbeaten 53, while Rohit Sharma added an invaluable 24. And the score of 143 proved to be six runs too many.
Kumble was declared the man-of-the-match despite his team finishing second and this was for the way he scalped wickets in each spell that he bowled; getting rid of Gilli and Symonds when they could have gone galloping away.
By Suneer Chowdhary, Twenty20Blog.co.uk
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