The crowds at Hyderabad will have to wait till the 3rd edition of the IPL to see whether their home team, the Deccan Chargers can win at home.
For the 9th straight game, they lost at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium and with this loss, they were shunted out of the Champions League. Adam Gilchrist won an important toss but on a belter of a pitch chose to chase in this do-or-die encounter.
Nonetheless Trinidad & Tobago scored a well below par, 149/7 in their 20 overs and the home side would have fancied their chances to chase that one down, especially since they’d packed their side with eight batsmen. However, their duck at the venue continued as they fell short of the target by 3 runs.
Their loss also meant that Somerset went through to the ‘Super Eights’ but it’s the Daren Ganga led side from the Carribean that go through to the next round with 4 points in their bag.
The T&T batsmen continued to employ the strategy of ‘hitting out’ even if that was to cost them wickets at regular intervals. As a result, once again none of their batsmen could go on to score a really big score but they continued to score at a fair chip and hence maintain a decent run rate.
Infact at the end of 5 overs, they’d raced to 49/1 with the Chargers guilty of some sloppy fielding and bowling. RP Singh was especially guilty of letting down his captain in his 1st spell with the bowler going for 3 no-balls in one particular over. But the introduction of slow bowling thereafter not only stifled the run rate but also contributed to some wickets. In between the sloppy fielding and some dropped catches as well, ironically it were two brilliant pieces of fielding [run-outs] that also had a contribution in T&T’s downfall.
Kieron Pollard’s cameo at the end boosted the total to 149 but on that pitch, it seemed to be a very gettable score and Hyderabad would have fancied their chances of going through to the next round. Fidel Edwards was the best bowler on display with figures of 3 for 32 from his 4 overs.
Gilchrist scored a 6 off the very 1st legitimate delivery he faced which brought the crowds on their feet. But a flurry of wickets at the other end, including that of VVS Laxman and Andrew Symonds handed the momentum back to the opposition. Rohit Sharma along with his captain did a fine repair job with a partnership of 55 that came in quick time as well but then both the batsmen fell in quick succession.
Gilchrist was dismissed soon after he got to his 50 and Sharma once again ended up playing a cameo without really going on to get a big one. Venugopal Rao kept the side in the hunt with some aggressive hitting but with 13 needed off 13, he got out and the batsmen thereafter couldn’t do much as the side fell short by 3 runs. For his excellent spell of bowling, especially in the final over in which he conceded only 4, Dwayne Bravo was declared the ‘Man of the Match’.