Sunday, May 19, 2013

The Mighty bite the Dust



Kings XI Punjab 183/8 (20/20 ov); Mumbai Indians 133 (19.1/20 ov)
Kings XI Punjab won by 50 runs

MI won the toss and put KXIP in who were soon 6/2 in 2.2 overs, the odds in f/o MI, the pre-match favourites, still being as high as 1.37. And from there on they lost the plot, their best bowler Malinga going for 20 runs in his first over, the 8th of the innings. Mandeep Singh once again (was it consecutively 3rd time?) opened the batting to get out very early. KXIP went on to score an impressive 183, their scoring having decelerated a bit towards the end for session manipulation.

With the pitch and the ground, and MI's strong and performing batting, it was considered just above par score and accordingly the odds were high at 1.8, this time in f/o Punjab. By the 10th over, MI had lost their 4th wicket for 69 and the match had decisively gone in favour of Punjab. It continued so, Punjab winning by a big margin of 50 runs over one of the strongest teams. 

MI scored well in first 6 overs, scoring 14 runs in the 6th over, to be a healthy 51/2 at the end of this session and well in hunt. Can be said to be natural, though the natural phenomenon of high scoring in power-play overs doesn't happen about 8 times out of 10. But what is worth noting is how scoring dropped suddenly after 6th over even though same set batsmen were batting. Only 11 runs were scored in next 2.3 overs before next wicket was lost.

Interestingly, with similar 15.4 runs required per over in last 5 overs as was the case in their match against SRH when 15.5 runs were required in last 4 overs, with Pollard being on the crease in both the cases, the odds were around 1.1 in f/o the opposing team this time compared to 1.35 earlier. And MI had gone on to win comfortably from there on against SRH.

   


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