Tags:
Journalism of Courage
After the first three overs,Rajasthan Royals sat pretty on 34,with regular openers Ajinkya Rahane and Rahul Dravid ensuring them the perfect start.
The pair had just milked Irfan Pathan for 18 runs,including four boundaries,forcing Delhi skipper Virender Sehwag to turn to his confidante,the left arm spinner Shahbaz Nadeem. Brought on in the fifth over,Nadeem was,however,dispatched for 12 runs and it was then down to the purple cap holder Morne Morkel,who bowled with pace and hit the good lengths,to put the breaks on Rajasthans scoring.
Credit should also go to Negi for having observed and analysed Nadeems bowling from the other end. Nadeem had suffered when he gave the batsmen width and Negi went out wide,almost touching the return crease to keep the line tight.He had already bowled two dot balls to Rahane and the opener,impatient to score,tried the reverse sweep only to find the hands of Sehwag at point.
In walked the danger man Shane Watson. Negi stuck to his ploy of giving the batsman little width and in his third over,after holding Watson for two deliveries consecutively,he angled in the armer on the third ball. Watson,without gauging the length,went for the slog sweep only to find his off-stump uprooted. Dravid punished the bowler with a boundary that left the sweeper no chance off a short ball,but Negi,who already had two wickets and Nadeem were slowly taking control of the game.
Negi,bowling unchanged,was into his final over and trapped Brad Hodge when the batsman tried to force a ball that was once again angled in well and was neither short nor wide enough for a square cut.
Hodge,looking to place it between the sweeper and point,played it uppishly into Sehwags hands at point. Negi was left with four balls,but it was enough for him to do more damage. Ashok Menaria was the next man in and like a lot of batsmen before him,had little clue about Negis pace and length. After playing and missing the previous ball,Menaria tried an expansive pull off a good length delivery,Negis final ball,giving the spinner his fourth wicket. Negis spell,which read 4-0-18-4,literallly broke the backbone of the Rajasthan Royals. When he completed his spell in the 13th over,the home side was 95/5 after being 70 for no loss in eight.
Sehwag makes it five-in-five
If Negi was the main man with the ball,Sehwag toyed with the Rajasthan bowling in their chase of 142. He smashed the medium pacers all round the park and his fifth consecutive half-century of the tournament he ended with 73 off 38 balls ensured there was no last over drama like the one at Kotla. Sehwag reached his fifty in the eighth over alongside Kevin Pietersen,who also scored a quickfire 36. Sehwag took six more overs to reach 73,having scored 12 fours and a six before his stay was ended by Brad Hogg.
Delhi reached the target in 15.2 overs with Naman Ohja finishing things off with a maximum.
