Anand Krishna’s musings

Earlier this evening, the Chennai Super Kings led by M S Dhoni trumped Yuvraj Singh’s Kings XI Punjab. (I must say there is a lot of “royalty” playing in the IPL, with as many as 3 of the 8 teams having some form of the words kings or royals in their names)). And what a match it was! After a shaky start, Badrinath and Raina asteadied the innings, with the former playing superbly. Later, Badri was joined by Dhoni, and by the 15th over, it seemed that Yuvraj & Co would again have to chase a taregt of 200+ runs (if I am not wrong, Chennai totted up a mammoth 240 the last time these two teams played- and Punjab scored a creditable 210 or so). And that is when inspired bowling by Sreesanth, Hopes, VRV Singh and Pathan choked Chennai. Badri and Dhoni were both out after scoring 60 runs apiece, and the last 5 overs yielded just over 35 runs.

Punjab too got off to a less-than-great start, losing Hopes to a leg-side delivery from Albie Morkel that, in most cases, would have been dispatched to the ropes. Young Shaun Marsh, the other opener, played some delectable strokes and showed clearly why he is a very exciting prospect for Australia (he has already been selected for the Aussie ODI squad for the Wes Indies tour). They were cruising along at a decent clip when Dhoni brought on L Balaji- he that was destroyer-in-chief during the India’s tour of Pakistan in 2004 (05?). After a long period away from the game due to major fitness problems, Balaji struck body blows, ending with amazing figures of 4-0-24-5. IN the process, he also took the first hat-trick of the IPL (and possibly, T20 cricket) in what was his last over, which also became the last over of the match.

Punjab’s 5 match winning streak has been broken and after a mid-tournament stutter, when Chennai lost 3 matches, they are back to their winning ways, having beaten the Delhi Daredevils last week in what was another humdinger of a match that was decided in the last ball.

At this stage, it is still not clear who will make it to the semi-finals. But I’d have to say that barring major reversals in fortunes over the next two weeks, Punjab, Chennai, Rajasthan and either Delhi or Kolkata will almost ceratinly make it. Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore will bring up the rear.