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Journalism of Courage
Mumbai Indians retained Lasith Malinga for the fourth season of the Indian Premier League and true to his reputation the Sri Lankan did the demolition job for the side in their season opener against the Delhi Daredevils by picking up five wickets and giving away precious little in the form of runs. In two yorker-filled spells Malinga cleaned up the top-order threat in the form of David Warner,probably shattered the confidence of a young Unmukt Chand and then knocked over the lower-middle and lower-order batsmen to play the lead role in bowling out Delhi for just 95 in 17.4 overs.
Malinga had figures of 2-0-7-2 in his first spell and returned to strike on another three occasions to finish with 5 for 13 in 3.4 overs. Malinga returned with the best figures by any Mumbai Indians bowler in IPL and was credited with bowling the first maiden over of this edition,the fourth of the innings,as Virender Sehwag,after having watched Warner and Chand fall in similar fashion in a pace of three deliveries,played out the Sri Lankan paceman with a dead bat.
Easy chase
Mumbai eased to the finish with an unbeaten partnership of 68 for the third wicket between skipper Sachin Tendulkar and Rohit Sharma. They won with 19 balls to spare but the mismatch between the two sides was greater than the sum total of the deliveries not bowled on Sunday. Malingas fiery spells meant Mumbai had no reason to panic after the early dismissal of Davy Jacobs,Tendulkars new opening partner,and the brilliant run out of Ambati Rayudu effected by Roelof van der Merwe.
Malinga has a knack of picking up wickets in a heap in his short spells. A recent performance being against Kenya in the World up. Nowadays,he has also developed a habit of placing cricket shoes on the popping crease to simulate a match-like pitch map in his field of vision while practicing. Time and again he can hit around those shoes or the cones placed where a batsmans feet usually remain stuck even as the ball crashes into the stumps. Warner hardly got a glimpse of Malingas yorker before it uprooted his stumps.
From the 22 legitimate deliveries that Malinga delivered in the Daredevils innings,16 of them were aimed at the batsmens toes,while four balls hit the middle stump of Warner,Chand,Y Venugopala Rao and Morne Morkel.
He made a difficult task look simple like he always does. He bowled full,fast and accurately. As he went about doing his business in a clinical manner,the Ferozeshah Kotla fell silent. A couple of hours later Malinga wore a satisfied look as he addressed the media conference. He spelt out his simple but rather effective approach to bowling.
I dont think about who is the batsman I am bowling to. I bowl what I want to,be it a yorker,a slower one8230;A good yorker is a good yorker for any batsman, he said summing up his formula for destruction.
