The Gayle Force Does It Again
On yet another overcast day in South Africa, two teams who were being written off after their first matches, squared off against each other with each hoping desperately to avoid defeat. Both teams would have been aware that this was a match they had to win to regain credibility with their supporters.
Brendom McCullum won the toss, and opted to field. For Kolkata, there was still no Mendis in the playing eleven, although they made one change - dropping Agarkar for rookie Yashpal Singh. Punjab retained the same eleven that played against Delhi.
Kolkatta started off well, with Ishant Sharma finding his rhythm and getting Karan Goel caught in the slips by Chris Gayle in his first over. That brought Irfan Pathan to the crease, who was promoted to No.3. Irfan swung his bat lustily and was looking ominous, when Sourav Ganguly turned things around for his team with a superb first over that saw him pick up two wickets and beat Yuvraj's bat a couple of times.
Punjab had their best batsmen - Yuvraj and Sangakkara - at the crease, and they then set about rebuilding the innings. Their partnership of 56, scored in fairly quick time, was brought to an end by a needless run-out when Yuvraj correctly did not respond to Sangakkara's call for a rash single. The wicket was lost at the most inopportune moment, because Ishant and Ganguly, the two best bowlers of the day, had just been bowled out. Yuvraj fell trying to hit one six too many, and a cameo by Mahela Jayawardene took Punjab to a respectable 158 for 6.
To successfully chase that, Kolkata needed one batsman to get stuck in and play a long innings, and it had to be one of the top four - or as cricket fans like to call them - one of the multiple captaincy candidates. The innings got off to a sedate start, but then the King's Eleven were hit by a Gayle force.
Chris Gayle exploded in the fourth over the way only he can - swatting sixes and fours nonchalantly. It didn't help Punjab that he was dropped twice - by Karan Goel at mid-wicket and by Sangakkara behind the stumps. McCullum's wicket pulled things back for the King's XI a touch, but Gayle still found the timing to smash yet another six, before the by-now-familiar rain came down, and the players trooped off the field, for what turned out to be the end of the match. Kolkata were sitting pretty at 79 for 1 after 9.2 overs, and Messrs Duckworth-Lewis confirmed that they were ahead of the required score by 11 runs.
Punjab lost their second successive match after a rain interruption, and although they were clearly not in the driving seat when the rains came down, they will feel hard done by.
Man of the Match:
Chris Gayle for his hurricane innings that made the difference between victory and defeat.
Turning Point of the Match:
Karan Goel dropping Gayle, when the latter was on 2 off 4 balls. Sangakkara dropped Gayle too but that was when he had already powered to 32 off 17 balls. Goel's drop was by far the costlier of the two - he scored 42 off 22 balls after that drop, which was a match-winning effort.
Soundbytes:
"McCullum eased the pressure off me. I tried to get my eye in." - this from Chris Gayle who scored 44 not out off 26 balls. McCullum was out for 21 off 16 balls.
