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Journalism of Courage
Three balls into the third over of the Kochi Tuskers innings,a TV camera homed in on coach Geoff Lawson in the dugout. We have some long term goals at the moment, he said. First ones the next ball.
Mahela Jayawardene didnt have any trouble dealing with the next ball,or the two balls after that,and even managed to crack Dale Steyn to the point boundary.
The fielders changed ends. Ishant Sharma steamed in,bowled it full and straight. Kedar Jadhav,feet unmoving,knew even before the umpire confirmed it,that the ball that struck him on his pads was headed in the general direction of middle stump. Kochi were six for five. None of the five dismissed batsmen had opened their accounts.
The 129/7 that Deccan Chargers had posted suddenly looked like 200. Four balls later,when Jayawardene edged a snorter,straightening and rearing towards the shoulder of his bat,to the keeper to become Ishants fifth victim in twelve deliveries,it looked like 250.
A few lusty blows from Thisara Perera and a bit of dogged resistance from Ravindra Jadeja steered Kochi past the lowest total in IPL history,Rajasthans 58 against Bangalore at Cape Town in 2009. But once Perera went,the question of a comeback went out of the window. In the end,Kochi was bowled out for 74,with Ishant,who only bowled three overs,taking five for 12 and new-ball partner Dale Steyn coming back to clean-bowl the last two batsmen in two balls to finish with three for 16.
Back to his best?
Right from the start,this had been a game for the seamers. Kochi had begun well enough,with RP Singh,Sreesanth and Vinay Kumar getting the ball to move all over the place to reduce the Chargers to 20 for three.
Ishant,however,was freakishly good. His second ball of the day,angled across the left-handed Parthiv Patel,forced a tentative prod,with right foot moving away from leg stump in telltale T20 manner,and found the edge through to the keeper. His next ball cut back in and bowled Raiphi Vincent Gomez for his third golden duck of the tournament. Brad Hodge managed to avoid a first-baller,but was out for a duck anyway,bowled by Ishant,failing to move his feet.
When the IPL auction came around,Deccan Chargers paid less than half of what Shah Rukh Khan had forked out for Ishant when he went under the hammer in 2008. But the Delhi seamer now looks refreshed,hitting the deck hard,getting it to jag around off the wicket,and even managing to breach the 150kph mark on occasions.
Sangakkara wins Lankan duel
Sangakkara vs. Jayawardene was an overwhelmingly one-sided affair. From the doldrums of 20/3,it was the left-handed number threes 47-ball 65 that took the Chargers to what was,in the end,the winning score by a comfortable margin. After an early reprieve,when he was bowled off a Sreesanth no-ball when on 6,
Sangakkara was dominant,flicking,pulling and driving imperiously through cover. In all,he struck 10 fours,of which the best was probably the scoop he played off Sreesanth just after crossing 50. Sangakkara put on 90 for the fourth wicket with Cameron White,who made 31.
