By Suneer Chowdhary
The target was 179 for Punjab, made further difficult by the early loss of wickets. And yet, in Dinesh Karthik, Punjab found an unlikely hero who steered his side to a comfortable win in the end.
Published: May 13, 2011, 11:30 PM (IST)
Edited: May 13, 2011, 11:30 PM (IST)
Punjab batsman Dinesh Karthik celebrates his half century during their IPL match against Kochi © AFP
By Suneer Chowdhary
Indore: May 13, 2011
In his column in one of the national dailies, Punjab captain Adam Gilchrist had spoken of the déjà-vu from the previous edition where his then-side, the Deccan Chargers needed to win many games in a row to get to the semi-finals.
This season, Punjab needed five in five at the start of their game against the table-toppers Mumbai Indians. They have already achieved two of those five, crushing Mumbai in that match and pulling off a Houdini’s act in this one against the Kochi Tuskers.
The target was 179 for Punjab, made further difficult by the early loss of wickets. And yet, in Dinesh Karthik, Punjab found an unlikely hero who steered his side to a comfortable win in the end.
Gilchrist and Paul Valthaty hit a boundary each in the first two overs of the innings but the chase was given a shot in the arm with the two sixes that Valthaty smashed in the third over. One went over the deep mid-wicket fence and the other was aimed slightly to his left, but the result wasn’t too different.
RP Singh had his revenge though and soon enough. He had Valthaty bowled when the batsman went for a big one but could only offer the gate between the bat and the pad for the ball to go through.
At the other end, Gilchrist continued to find timing difficult to get and after pottering around for 14 balls, he made nine and was dismissed off the next. RP Singh was the bowler again and Punjab were 31 for two in the fifth, with the asking rate having climbed to almost 10.
Karthik joined Shaun Marsh and flicked the second ball he faced to the fence. Marsh got the momentum back with three boundaries in the sixth over. Once the Powerplay overs were done, one would have expected the run-rate to come down even further and in the couple of overs that followed, only 12 came.
It was in the ninth over that the game changed complexion. Karthik has been one of the under-performers of the team till before this game but he seemed to have chosen the right time to find his form.
Vinay Kumar was smote away for a six and a four in that over, before following up with the same sequence off Raiphi Gomez. Marsh did the same to Prasant Parameswaran but it was in the 12th and the 13th over of the innings that the ante was even further upped.
35 runs were hit in the two that included four sixes – three of them for Karthik – and by the time the Tuskers realised what had hit them, Punjab needed only 48 in the last seven overs. One of these sixes also brought up Karthik’s half-century.
The match had suddenly turned on its head and was Punjab’s to lose at this stage. RP Singh did put a flutter or two in the enemy camp when he scalped a couple of wickets in his fourth over, getting rid of both set batsmen. However, the asking rate had fallen to the realms of the very-achievable by then and Punjab romped home winners by six wickets.
The Kochi Tuskers should have got to 200 after the manner in which they started. The Kings XI Punjab struggled to get their lines right and an unprecedented 19 wides were sent down in the innings and at 93 without loss in the ninth over, Kings XI Punjab were staring at a huge ask.
Unfortunately, the dismissal of Brendon McCullum, which one thought was unjustly given out lbw triggered a middle-order slowdown, if not a collapse. It was simply not a pitch for a capitulation!
Mahela Jayawardene carried on at the other end, showing a comeback to form after having scored almost nothing in his first 11 games. There was his customary grace in his stroke-making and yet, he took only 52 balls to get to his 76. Had it not been for the loss of strike and the consequent loss in the momentum, a century was there for his taking.
In the end, there was a resurrection from the first-timer Owais Shah, who flat-batted a couple of sixes in his 12-ball 23. However, his untimely run-out allowed the Tuskers only 14 runs in the last two overs of the innings.
Brief scores: KTK 178 for seven in 20 overs (Mahela Jayawardene 76*, Brendon McCullum 32; Bipul Sharma 2 for 32, Piyush Chawla 1 for 30) lost to KXIP 181 for four in 18.4 overs (Dinesh Karthik 69, Shaun Marsh 42; RP Singh 4 for 25) by 6 wickets
Man of the match: Dinesh Karthik
(Suneer is a Mumbai-based cricket writer and can be contacted at suneerchowdhary@gmail.com and Tweets here @suneerchowdhary)
