Super Weekend: – IPL Rocks !!!

No doubt the weekend was superb. It involved lot of excitement, disappointment, surprises, close finishes, tactical game plans, sigh of relief for some and more important a lot fun, yes; great cricketing skills were on display. The best thing is there are lots more in store in coming days.

Match 1: -

The weekend started with Rajsthan taking on Kolkata. This game was important for RR as they were yet to open their account. Thanks to local talent Ojha, Fazal, and Jhunjhunwala who delivered on time and rescued Rajasthan and put up a challenging total of 165 runs on board. Kolkata started cautiously and set good foundation to win a match and were 95-3. They needed a big hitting from big guns Saurav, Mathews and Shah to accelerate the score and to take Kolkata home. But there on Shane Warne steeled the show with his good captaincy. He knows his team very well and used his player’s strength efficiently. Kolkata big guns failed to accelerate the score and they ended losing the match by 34 runs. It was heartening to see Kolkata losing the game with 5 wickets in hand. With this win Shane must have felt relieved and this win will surely boost Rajasthan’s confidence.

Match 2:-

Many of us had our Saturday night booked for big battle between Mumbai and Bangalore . Bangalore outclassed Mumbai in this game, on account of skipper Kumble’s brilliant game plan to restrict Mumbai’s big guns. Bangalore bowled brilliantly to limit Mumbai to 151 runs. Styne, Kumble and budding Indian talent Vinay Kumar did not allow Mumbai batsman to score freely. But one good thing for Mumbai fans is that they saw the depth in batting order, the 10^th man Zahir Khan contributed in their score. Partnership of 85 runs between Pandey and Kallis took game far away from Mumbai. Kallis remained unbeaten on 66 and continued to be a orange capped batsman in IPL-3. Bangalore won this match by 7 wickets. This shows the ordinary performance by five international Mumbai bowlers in this match; full marks to Bangalore for winning this match. Let’s wait and watch to see who wins a latter part of the battle between these two potential finalists.

IPL Auction: -

On Super Sunday, all fans got surprise gift from Lalit Modi as Sahara won bid for one team which will take part in IPL-4 and they opted Pune as their base location. So Maharashtra now has two to support teams from next IPL onwards. Now we will be privileged to see more cricketing action in next year’s IPL. The Rendezvous Sports World won the bid for second team and opted Kochi as their home town. IPL got around $550 million from auctioning of only 2 teams. This shows the faith of all these investors in the cricket and Indian cricket lovers.

Match 3:-

Sunday’s cricketing action started with big fight between two mighty teams Hyderabad and Delhi. Deccan put 172 runs to win for Delhi. Symond and Rohit Sharma were the main contributors to this score. Gilly failed again to convert his start in big score. It was hard to comeback in the match once you lose player like Sehvag cheaply. Warner played good inning and justified his inclusion, but his inning was not sufficient to take Delhi home. Karthik added some twist in the match by hitting some real big ones but got out without completing the job. Delhi ended losing the game by 10 odd runs. Now Deccan held top position. I believe its time for Delhi to re-group and come up with some good performance to break their losing streak.

Match 4:-

The last match of weekend was between Punjab and Chennai. One can not expect better match than this. Chennai did well to restrict Punjab on 145 runs. Looking at Hayden’s form, this target looked easily achievable and it was till Hayden and Parthiv were taking on Punjab bowlers with ease. Once Hayden got out, Punjab took Chennai’s wicket at regular interval. The new find Theron bowled good spell, giving Punjab a chance to return in the game. And game went into super-over. The in-form Theron bowled super over and restricted Chennai on 9. Earlier Murli has troubled Punjab and was the obvious choice to bowl the super-over for Chennai’s Mahela returned the favor with huge hit on the very first ball he faced and got out on next ball while trying to do same. Then came up Yuvi to complete the job, all Punjab fans were on their toes and were praying to register their first win in IPL-3. I saw Yuvi attempting reverse sweep first time, and he succeeded in taking Punjab home. During the course of match fate was moving like pendulum from one side to other. Finally it was Punjab who registered their much required first win.

Key highlights of weekend are – Two teams registered their first win of the season, one match went into super over. Rohit Sharma is back in form, Kalis remained unbeaten after 4 matches and Punjab found new weapon in Theron.

So this weekend was full of cricketing action. I wish there are lots many such weekends to come and it will be a treat to watch this kind of cricketing action.

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