Mumbai Indians v Chennai Superkings, IPL 2009
second encounter
So Mumbai are out of the IPL 2009 (they still have a 5% chance of making it, Bangalore(v Delhi, Deccan); Punjab (v Deccan, Chennai); and Rajashtan (v Delhi, Kolkata)- all lose both their games and Mumbai win against Delhi)...
However, todays game sums up Mumbai's performance in this IPL. They played well again, but lost too few wickets but could not get the strike rate burst they needed. But this was a target (149) which Mumbai with a quality bowling attack should have restricted the Chennai batters.
Guess what they did restrict the batters and yet they lost!
When the scorecard for:
Mumbai Indians, includes
- Jayasuria (30 of 17),
- Duminy (62 of 54),
- Nayar (33 of 27),
- Tendulkar (11 of 14).... 148/5
whereas for Chennai
- Hayden (60 of 57, no boundary till 11 overs, and paced his innings 5 of 16 and dropped; 9 of 23; 16 of 29; 25 of 35 at the end of 13 overs). If any other top international batsman paced his chase this way, especially since Raina the only player with proper shots was out early, they would be out of international cricket (which is perhaps why he is out of it!).
- Raina 20 of 12- really the only player who looked like accomplishing the strike rate demanded.
- Dhoni 23-22 (with a four in the last over)
- Badrinath 22-23 with a whole lot of edges
Now if you look at Chennai's scorecard excpet for Raina who made 8 runs more then balls played, you would wonder how you could chase down 149 in 120 balls...
As Tendulkar mentioned in the post match interview- he was spot on- they gave too may extras - 10 wides. But what he did not mention were the 16 innovative leg byes (3 Four leg Byes!) which gave momentum to Chennai's innings instead of losing wickets!
Surely, this is not an excuse which a losing team can cite, but this pretty much sums up Mumbai's outing this year. They were very good overall, but failed to smack a few big ones or string together edgy shots from lots of fringe players (which also Tendulkar tried by shuffling the batting order).
Get the IPL back to India next year! All their big strike rate players (Jayasuria, Bravo, Nayar) were good but not with explosive strike rates. Jayasuria and Bravo were big buys for the sub-continent and Tendulkar has shown faith in the sub-continent (and the catchment players), because this was supposed to be the Indian Premier League...
and yes, do not ever lose another match when 6 runs are needed of 9 balls and 4 wickets are in hand. There is no captain or spectator support which can fix that (not to mention that hat-trick from Rohit Sharma)!
Saumil
Mumbai
16 May 2009
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