A Standard Script

58th match: Pune Warriors v Mumbai Indians at Pune - May 11, 2013

Pune Warriors 112/8 (20/20 ov); Mumbai Indians 116/5 (18.5/20 ov)

Mumbai Indians won by 5 wickets (with 7 balls remaining)

PW were the clear under-dogs and they were also to lose the match. Standard scripting, followed quite often in such a scenario is to make the underdogs go down initially, for odds to go down further in f/o the stronger team, then make the weaker team fight back for a brief period, causing hope/scare among the punters, before it collapses for the good for the remaining match.

Such a script was followed in this match also. Having lost 2 wickets by the 5th over, PW fought back through the 3rd wicket partnership between Yuvraj and Manish Pandey (84/2 in the 13th over), and then collapsed all of a sudden to restrict themselves to a hopeless 112 in 20 overs. 

Session scoring was well manipulated, they scoring only 12 runs in last 3 overs (8th to 10th) of the first session, and then hitting two sixes soon as the 11th over began. The score at the end of the 20 overs session was such as to be less than the minimum on offer during any point of time during the second session.

Though MI appear to have laboured while chasing, the odds remained below 1.1 in their favour for most of their innings, i.e. the punters led on by the 3rd wicket partnership of PW to back them with the temptation of higher returns were trapped for good with the fall of 3 quick wickets for PW to be 85/5.