A good see-saw match was what I witnessed today.
Mumbai Indians are looking formidable side with Sachin, Jayasuriya, Duminy and Bravo . There young Indian players Nayar and Dhawan are good too. There bowling led by Maling, Zaheer , Harbhajan and Bravo looks good too.
Deccan Charger on the other hand have really great top but they have a really long tail which has again hampered the finish of the Deccan Chargers yet again. The addition of Dwayne Smith has further bolstered their explosive top compromising of Gilly,Gibbs and Sharma. The weak spot for them is the lax form of Laxman and no support from Ravi Teja and Rao in middle order. So Deccan relies very heavily on its top to perform which they have till now. But recent games against Banglore and Mumbai has shown once the top 4 goes away they are not able to score runs and give a decent finish to the game. Thankfully their bowling has been going well till now with pace duo RP and Edwards proving good support to each other. Pragyan Ojha has been good in the middle overs.
Going into the game I wanted Gilly’s team to win but on the back of my mind I knew Mumbai were more favorites to win as they have more evenly balanced squad.
Thanks to good batting at the top by Gilchrist,Gibbs and Smith it looked 200 within the reach. But once Smith , Sharma and Laxman departed due to good bowling from bravo it was quite a slide from there one. What really put me off was how Rao got a set batsman of greater caliber run out. He should have crossed and let Gibbs survive. The long tail of Deccan and good bowling from Malinga made target of Mumbai shorter by 20 runs atleast.
Mumbai were curtailed well by tight bowling by Edwards and RP. But over from Harmeet let Sachin and Mumbai back on track. I think Harmeet would be dropped in next match has he was sloppy in the field and did not perform well with the bowl.Sachin and Duminy did well to propel Mumbai to half way mark at half time. At that time it looked like Mumbai were going to have a comfortable win. But as we have witnessed timeout has changed the momentum of the game . After timout Ojha took the crucial wicket of the Tendulkar and then bowled couple of tight overs in tandem with Rao to gain the momentum back for Deccan. It was same scenario as Punjab to get 60 out of 30 but unfortunately for they did not have any set batsmen like Bopara once Duminy got out.
What surprised me was letting Rao bowl the 18th over instead of Dwayne Smith the more experienced person . It worked out well with going for only one six in the over. What I think Mumbai did wrong was after wicket of Tendulkar they slowed their momentum alot and let run rate climb high. The late charge by Harbhajan was great but it was just too much for him.
In the end Deccan won the game due to some fine bowling but they really need to finish the batting well by either ensuring the top stays till end or making change in team to include someone better than Teja and Rao.
With matches against Delhi and Chennai ,Deccan is going to have tough test and will rely on top order and good bowling to do wonder as it has done till now.
At this stage Mumbai,Delhi,Chennai and Deccan look strong to go to semifinal unless Rajasthan does their last year’s magic.
