IPL 8: RR win last-ball thriller, register fourth consecutive win

Three early wickets

Considering the eventual struggle to topple a lowly target like 128 and the slowness of the Vizag wicket, Hyderabad and its captain David Warner got off to a most terrific start. After Tim Southee had tied Shikhar Dhawan in all sorts of knots in the first over, Chris Morris extracted just the right amount of bounce in the next to allow Warner to cut loose. From the first four balls the South African pacer bowled, Warner had struck three boundaries. Never again would the rest of the match witness such a deluge of boundaries in a single over.

It would be unfair to blame Warner for giving other batsmen in his side a false sense of hope on a stickyish wicket. But it would be rather apt to blame the SRH captain for beginning a mini top-order collapse. And to find out how that unfolded, let’s fast forward to the end of the fourth over.

That spell of play begins with a Dhawan boundary. Having played an missed for a while until this point, Dhawan finally managed to latch on to a Dhawal Kulkarni loosener outside off and clamber it over covers for four. That made his captain, standing 22 yards away, happy. But that smile turned into wrath next ball as Dhawan edged a straightfoward chance to the ‘keeper and walked back to the pavilion.

So an angry Warner was first caught yelling at the umpire (one fabulously named Paschim Pathak) at the end of the over. Then, next ball, he took that anger out on Southee, by collaring a short ball over third man for six. But the real problem began after he gave new man KL Rahul the strike. With Rahul struggling to buy himself a run, Warner attempted a sharp single at the end of the over and was run out to an even sharper throw by Ajinkya Rahane. Next ball, Rahul was trapped (wrongly adjudged) LBW to make it three wickets in seven balls. From there on, the hosts were lucky to get to 127.

Two unheralded bowlers

Dhawal Kulkarni, a man who Team India flew to the World Cup as a net bowler, is in the right IPL team at the right time of his career. Like Shane Watson and Rahane before him, Kulkarni is one strong IPL season away from making the breakthrough in the national side. And just like Watson and Rahane, Kulkarni is lapping up the chances he gets in this team. Thursday was a perfect example.

After conceding six runs and striking with the wicket of Dhawan in his first over, Kulkarni dismissed Rahul with his first ball of the next. After that, the Mumbai pacer didn’t get any more wickets. But neither did he give away runs.

Five dot balls to England’s ODI captain Eoin Morgan, causing a wicket maiden, was followed up with a 2-run over to allow the 26-year old to boast of an economy rate of three in this most cruel format.

But if Kulkarni was good, Pravin Tambe was great. And the very first ball the 43-year old bowled (in the 13th over no less) showed his class. The ball fizzed out of his hand and pitched outside Naman Ojha’s leg stump. Then as Ojha looked to play it with a straight bat, the ball ripped across his blade and narrowly missed the top of off-stump. Ojha thanked his stars then, but to a less dramatically turning delivery in Tambe’s next over, the batsman had his off and middle stumps clattered.

Over all, Tambe bowled 12 dot deliveries in his quota of 24 balls. And if the leggie didn’t get creamed for a total of 11 runs in his final over, the penultimate of the game, his figures of 2-21 would surely have looked a whole lot better.

Underrated T20 batsman

In the last 17 months or so, Rahane has proved himself to be India’s coolest head and best bet across formats. Yet, hanging that T20 tag on his badge doesn’t quite come as naturally to his fans. Today, Rahane once again, in his own quiet way, went about changing perceptions.

It would be fair to say that if not for his invaluable 62 runs at the top of the order, with nine boundaries studded in the innings, Rajasthan would most certainly have lost this match. Why? Because the next highest score was 26 and no one really seemed to replicate his intent and hang about the wicket with him. Still, with wickets falling regularly at the other end, Rahane did what he always does — go about his business of getting runs. Some of his strokes were flashy (cuts, cover drives) and the others were strictly work (dab over midwicket). Both worked for him and his side.

Last-ball thriller

A cricket reporter fears few things more than a match stretching into a Super Over in an IPL game that begins at 8pm. With the match refusing to end and the deadline closing in, most in the press box wish that they hadn’t touched this profession with a barge pole. So as 3-to-win-of-4 became 3-of-3, then 2-of-2 and subsequently 1-of-1, this reporter too faced an existential crisis. Then James Faulkner cracked the last ball past a pulled-in field for four, handing Rajasthan their win and this page its report.