Last-over Knightmare

Rayudu seals it with final-ball six as Balaji concedes 23 to hand Mumbai unlikely win.

Twenty-one runs were needed in the final over as Lakshmipathy Balaji started his run-up and Mumbais James Franklin took the strike. The match looked Kolkata Knight Riderss to lose. And,incredibly,lose they did.

The capacity crowd at the Eden Gardens that had already started celebrating,was silenced by the towering New Zealander,who hit four fours off the first four balls to bring Mumbai right back in the game.

With a single off the penultimate ball,the equation came down to four off one. KKR skipper Gautam Gambhir,after prolonged discussions with the bowler,set up a field to stop a boundary at all costs.

Running into bowl the crucial last ball,one that would decide whether Kolkata finish a comfortable second or a precarious fourth in the table,Balaji must have thought about that one final delivery that sill haunts the nations collective psyche: Chetan Sharmas last ball to Javed Miandad at Sharjah in 1986.

One lesson that the coming generations would learn from that incident was never to send down a full-toss in such crunch situations. But in what rounded off a horrible evening for Balaji,his greasy palm with added sweat because of nerves lost the grip of the ball and Ambati Rayudu duly dispatched the volley off his hips to over deep square leg fence for a massive six.

The unbeaten 41-run stand between Franklin 45 in 23 balls and Rayudu 17 in six that came off just 15 balls,saw Mumbai overhauling a formidable 176-run target with five wickets in hand. The victory lifted them to the third spot which although means theyll have to win two more matches to make the final,it gave them an automatic Champions League spot.

For Kolkata,the only team in the evening fixture to be realistically vying for a second spot,it was a big psychological blow. Kolkata,who have been very consistent during the course of this tournament,dominated the game for the most part,but ultimately paid the price for faltering in the last quarter.

Kallis shows the way

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After they were reduced to 22 for two in the fourth over,Jacques Kallis anchored the innings with 59 in 42 deliveries and allowed Manoj Tiwary 35 off 22 and Yusuf Pathan 36 off 27 make the charge in the middle overs. Ryan ten Doeschate and Rajat Bhatia used the long handle effectively at the death to put 175 on the board.

We have to play exceptionally well to finish in the top two, Sachin Tendulkar had said at the toss as he chose to field on a flat deck. With a net run rate of 0.033,finishing up in the playoff pecking order was almost impossible and the skipper rested Andrew Symonds,Munaf Patel and Dhawal Kulkarni. But Tendulkar wanted to break a three-match losing streak and carry the winning momentum forward into the playoffs.

They didnt start well,however,with T Suman back in the hut with 13 on the board,and when Kieron Pollard was bowled by Balaji his only high point of the day the Mumbai dug out looked as if they had resigned to their fate. Thats when the Kiwi decided to turn the script on its head.