IPL 2016, Match 3: Gujarat Lions beat Kings XI Punjab by 5 wickets at Mohali, Stars and Flops
IPL 2016, Match 3: Gujarat Lions beat Kings XI Punjab by 5 wickets at Mohali, Stars and Flops
Suresh Raina’s Gujarat Lions made great start to their Indian Premier League (IPL) career with a win over Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) in the opening match of their IPL 2016 campaign. It was Dwayne ‘Champion’ Bravo who kept KXIP to moderate total of 161 after a terrific start. He almost had a fifer, but a dropped catch by Sarabjit Ladda off the last bowl of KXIP innings ensured he ended up with four wickets. Later, Aaron Finch set-up the chase upfront with his stroke-filled fifty and wicket-keeper batsman Dinesh Karthik finished it off with his unbeaten cameo.
Chasing 162, the Lions did not have the best of the starts when they lost Brendon McCullum for a duck. The former New Zealand captain looked a bit rusty coming out of a break after his international retirement and failed to give a good start to his team. Skipper Raina, who followed him, played a flashy cameo but could not convert it into a big one. It took a 65-run third wicket stand between Finch and Karthik to put the chase on track and even after the former’s dismissal, Karthik ensured he stayed till the end and finished it off for them.
Earlier, KXIP, who finished the last season at the bottom of the table, had made a few changes to their set-up by giving captaincy to the big-hitting South African David Miller and parting ways with George Bailey. Virender Sehwag’s transition from being their opener to being their mentor also made dent in the paying XI. However, when Murali Vijay and Manan Vohra started the KXIP innings, they made sure the stalwart was not being missed as they added 78 runs in eight overs. But once the duo was removed, the KXIP innings ran out of fizz and ended up being way short of what they could have achieved.
Bravo was the pick of the bowlers, whose slower ones and cutters proved too much for the KXIP batsmen. His spell of 4 for 22 broke the back of KXIP’s innings and left them gasping after a tremendous start.
The turning point was the two key wickets that he took in the middle stages of the match. A faster Yorker to get rid of Glenn Maxwell and then a wonderfully deceiving slower Yorker to remove the skipper Miller simply showed his class and eventually proved to be the match defining moment, as KXIP could never recover and get to a par score. In the process, Bravo also completed his 300 T20 wickets and became the first bowler to reach to the milestone.
Brief Scores:
Kings XI Punjab 161 for 6 in 20 overs [Murali Vijay 42(34), Manan Vohra 38(23); Dwayne Bravo 4-0-22-4, Ravindra Jadeja 4-0-30-2] lost to Gujarat Lions 162 for 5 in 17.4 overs [Aaron Finch 74(47), Dinesh Karthik 41(26)*; Sandeep Sharma 3-0-21-1] by 5 wickets