Persistent rain forced the match between Punjab and Delhi to be shortened to a 12 over affair.
Delhi left out the exciting Warner, and opted to include left-arm quick Dirk Nannes. They also opted to rest Glenn McGrath, preferring to preserve him for the business end of the tournament.
Virender Sehwag won the toss and inserted Punjab in as expected with the overcast conditions and the shortened match.
The decision was made to look extremely silly in the first half of the Punjab innings, with Karan Goel and Ravi Bopara going beserk. Goel got out off the last ball of the 6th over, with the score a formidable 67 for 1.
From there things started to go downhill for Punjab as they managed only 37 more runs for the loss of 6 more wickets in the next six overs.
Spin was king again with Daniel Vettori turning in a spell of 3-0-15-3. His spell also saw two of Punjab's batsmen run themselves out needlessly - with Yuvraj Singh being the culprit on one occasion and Piyush Chawla suffering on account of Irfan Pathan's reckless call.
Punjab eventually ended up on a fairly decent 104 for 7, but it was at least 20 runs short of where they should have ended after the start they got.
If the first half of the Punjab innings saw one way traffic with the ball being fetched regularly from the stands, the second half saw one way traffic in the other direction, with batsmen trooping back to the pavilion.
When Delhi came out to bat, what Punjab needed was quick wickets. What they got was 11 balls of a Gauti-Viru special, before the skies opened up with heavier rain than there had been all day. The hottest opening pair in the business blasted four 4s and a six in those eleven balls to take Delhi to 24 without loss.
When play started again, the target had been revised to 54 from 6 overs - which meant Delhi had just 30 more to get from 25 balls, with a rampaging Sehwag and an equally belligerent Gambhir at the crease.
The break did nothing to stem the flow of runs, and Delhi needed only 18 more balls (3 overs) to knock off the runs. At the end Sehwag was unbeaten on a furious 38 off 16 balls, while Gambhir looked positively snail-like on 16 off 13 balls, while Delhi had won at a canter by 10 wickets. It says much for the might of the Delhi team that they won comfortably even though they rested McGrath and didn't pick Twenty20 specialist Warner.
Man of the Match:
Daniel Vettori, whose crucial spell put the brakes on Punjab's free scoring and made the job much easier for his formidable batting lineup.
Turning Point of the Match:
11th over of the match, bowled by Vettori. Before the over Punjab were at 91 for 3. At the end of the over, they had slid to 98 for 6. Vettori's tight bowling contributed to two suicidal runs resulting in two run-outs and he picked up the wicket of Jayawardene too.
Soundbytes:
"It's nice to have Sehwag and Gambhir on the same side for a change!" - Daniel Vettori gets candid, with memories of India's tour to New Zealand still fresh.
"Sachin and Rahul are legends of the game, they have 10000+ runs in both ODIs and Tests, so they can adapt to any format. I'm proud to play in the same team as them" - Virender Sehwag makes a heartwarming comment about two people he's grown up watching and played alongside.
0 comments:
Post a Comment