IPL 5 comes to life as Chennai Super Kings pull off shock victory!
The IPL 5 came to life as Chennai Super Kings pulled off an incredibly miraculous victory over Royal Challengers Bangalore! CSK went onto chase down an imposing target of 206! It was a final ball victory as Ravindra Jadeja, the million dollar boy for CSK got a thick edge to thirdman off R Vinay Kumar to win the match with a boundary.
CSK were certainly out of the game needing 43 runs to win from the final two overs! Surprisingly Daniel Vettori threw the ball to part-timer Virat Kohli who was taken for 4, 6, 4, 6, 2 and a six by Albie Morkel in the penultimate over! CSK needed a manageable 15 runs to win from the final over and R Vinay Kumar wasn’t good enough to stop that with his medium pace. Vinay Kumar spoilt it for RCB by slipping in a beamer to Dwayne Bravo which was taken for a boundary and the extra ball as a result of that was slashed one handed over thirdman for a flat six by the same batsman!
The heroes for CSK in the run chase were Faf du Plessis with 71 from 46 balls with 5 fours and 4 sixes, Skipper MS Dhoni with 41 (from 24 balls with a four and 2 sixes), Dwayne Bravo with 25* (from 15 balls with 2 fours and a six) and Albie Morkel with his clinical 28 (from 7 balls with 2 fours and 3 sixes). The CSK batsmen ensured that Muralitharan’s great bowling spell of 4-0-21-3 went in vain! Faf du Plessis was given the Man of the Match award for his 71.
Gayle powers RCB to 205 for 8
Royal Challengers Bangalore seem to have batted hosts Chennai Super Kings out of the contest by piling up a massive total of 205 for 8! The RCB team got off to a flier from young Mayank Agarwal who smacked 45 from 26 balls with 5 fours and 3 sixes in the early overs.
Chris Gayle didn’t get much of strike when Mayank was on song. But once he departed, Chris Gayle took over to launch a brutal assault on the CSK bowlers taking them for half a dozen sixes! Gayle smashed 68 from 35 balls with 2 fours and 6 sixes. He added 109 runs with Virat Kohli who started slowly but finished with 57 from 46 balls with 5 fours and 2 sixes.
CSK lost plenty of wickets in a hurry towards the end, four of them in the final over but by then got past an intimidating total!
Toss and Teams: Royal Challengers Bangalore have won the toss and elected to bat first against hosts Chennai Super Kings at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. RCB have made one change with Raju Bhatkal coming in for Harshal Patel and CSK have gone in with the same XI. The pitch is expected to slow down as the game progresses.
Chennai Super Kings: MS Dhoni (Captain and Wicket Keeper), Murali Vijay, Faf du Plessis, Suresh Raina, Dwayne Bravo, Ravindra Jadeja, Albie Morkel, S Badrinath, R Ashwin, Doug Bollinger, Shadab Jakati
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Daniel Vettori (Captain), Chris Gayle, Cheteshwar Pujara, AB de Villiers (Wicket Keeper), Virat Kohli, Saurabh Tiwary, Mayank Agarwal, Raju Bhatkal, Vinay Kumar, Zaheer Khan, Muthiah Muralitharan
