SL V NZ: Malinga magic almost gets lankans home, a feeling of Déjà vu

Opposition cruising in  a run chase with wickets in hand, enough overs to spare and not many runs to get. And then comes the slinga Malinga who manages to create panic in the opposition camp but unfortunately fails to get his team home. New Zealand won this group stage match in a nail biter against Sri Lanka by 1 wicket in Cardiff, Wales  and left us with a feeling of Déjà vu.

It was the Super eight match  between South Africa and Sri Lanka in the ICC World cup 2007 played at Guyana, West Indies. Remember? If you were in India or Sri Lanka, you would probably caught up on this  late at night or watched the highlights early next morning.

South Africa were chasing a modest score of 209 and were comfortably placed at 206 for 5 with Pollock  and Kallis looking good. 4 more runs required of 32 balls with 5 wickets in hand. Most certainly, SA clear favorite at this point. Malinga bowling his 8th over had not taken a wicket till then but bowled a beautiful slower loopy yorker to deceive Pollock and to hit the wicket. Pollock bowled. But South Africa are still in a comfortable position with Kallis well set in the 80 s and 4 more wickets in hand. The next ball, Malinga bowls a speared in Yorker and Andrew Hall manages to lob it up in the air to give  an easy catch at covers. End of the over and the next. Malinga come back 3 runs required of 24 balls and kallis to face the Hatrick ball. Full, outside off stump, Kallis goes for a square-drive and nicks it behind to Sangakara and malinga gets the Hatrick more importantly the big wicket of Kallis. Tension rise up in the South African dressing room and worst was to follow. Ntini bowled of a perfect in swinging yorker hitting the stumps, too good for a No 10 batsmen.  Malinga , had turned the match on its head with 4 wickets in 4 balls leaving 3 runs of 22 balls with 1 wicket in hand. It was unbelievable turnaround. Unfortunately they could not get the last wicket and hence lost the match quite similar to that of this match against New Zealand.

Till this curly golden haired slingy fast bowler from the Island of Sri Lanka is around, teams better watch out. When you think it's done, this man with bag full of tricks manages to come up with a stellar performance out of the blue to surprise one and all.
We only wish he was able to take his team over the line in both the occasions.

Nonetheless, a great performer and entertainer  of the modern day cricket, SLINGA MALINGA!

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Gayle ensured the party began early on Thursday here in the Garden city.

Match 12 of the season, turned out to be a good home game for the team in red and gold.  RCB bowlers first set the tone by restricting the KKR to 154 with good medium pace bowling and the next half was the Gayle show in Chinnaswamy, Bangalore.

Couple of changes by both the teams getting into the match. KKR leaving out Brett Lee for Ryan Mcleran was an interesting swap. RCB winning the toss and put KKR in to bat. RCB medium pacers were right on the money, hitting the right lengths. Henriques and Vinay Kumar got the breakthroughs required and put KKR on the back foot. However we saw a promotion up the batting order for Yusuf Pathan and was clearly given the license to cut loose. It looked a good move till he hit one straight down the throat of the long on fielder  to a slower ball by Henriques. Manoj Tiwary joined the captain who was living dangerously and also was looking fidgety at the crease. He eventually gifted his wicket to Vinay kumar trying to slog one over mid-wicket not before scoring his 17^th 50 in IPL, most by any batsmen in the history of IPL. Tiwary tried to score some quick runs but the RCB death bowling was on display, hitting the Yorker length more often than not. Venky, the RCB bowling coach will be proud of his boys. KKR finally had to settle down to 154, at least  20 runs  short on this batting beauty at  Bangalore.

It was no brainier that when KKR came back to bowl had to get Gayle early. Narine was deployed  early  to bowl against Gayle. But the big man played him out instead of taking him on. It was clear that there is a lot of method to this batting madness of his. Narine did not leak runs but did not cause any damage either. Mayank Agarwal once again was disappointing. Captain Kohli joined Gayle and scored more than run a bowl before he got out to Balaji. The two Delhi boys Gambhir and Kohli got involved in the battle of words and had to be  separated by players. Anyone who has followed them in the past, would expect this from 2 hot headed passionate men. With Gayle there in the middle, it was matter of time before the action moved back to cricket, hitting those big sixes he is known for and he scored 9 of them. He literally murdered the bowling, so much so that KKR's dibley dobly successful bowler Rajat Bhatia was brought into the attack when the opposition needed 20 of 24 balls. His selection on lively wickets is then questionable.  ABD did not look at his best but was good enough to accompany Gayle to get RCB home with 15 balls remaining. Gayle was awarded man of the match yet again for his 85 of 50 balls. This victory puts RCB right on top of the table for the moment. KKR clearly need to get their team combination and strategy right for their away matches. 

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Dhoni and his men too hot for KXIP

MATCH 11:  KXIP vs CSK

The first home game of the season did not go as expected for Kings XI Punjab. The team looked lethargic on the field and was a no match to the formidable CSK who won by 10 wickets here in Mohali, Chandigarh.

Hussey scored 86 of 54 balls to take CSK  home by 10 wickets against KXIP

Opting to field after winning the toss, the men in yellow put in a solid performance. Dirk Nannes looked comfortable with new ball, giving  his team the important  breakthrough at the top of the innings and seems to have taken the place of Bollinger really well. Chriss Morris making his debut in IPL looked a good addition into the team. Bravo was effective with his slower ones, so were the spinners. Surprising to see Ashwin bowl only 3 overs. MSD will have a reason for the same like he has for most of his decisions.
On the other hand, the only time Kings XI looked in the game was when David Hussey and Gurkeerat Singh put in 56 run stand for the 4th wicket but looked a below par  team otherwise. The 19 year old Manan Vohra showed glimpses of his talent but did last long.  

Second Innings did not make for a good contest. Kings XI were poor on the field, the captain seemed  to have lost the spunk that he was known for. There was hardly anything going well for the team in red. Hussey and Vijay looked comfortable in the middle and did a fantastic job chasing the modest but tricky score of 138 with 16 balls remaining. The run rate would come in handy during the later stages of the tournament like it did last year where CSK sneaked through to playoffs based on run rate.

It looked all too easy for CSK. Darren Lehman, coach of Kings XI would be expecting the boys to put up a better show during their  next tie in Rajasthan  on Sunday.

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