Royals bring worst out of best

League leaders Mumbai lose to Rajasthan by 7 wickets after being restricted to their lowest ever total of 94

At exactly the half way stage of the Mumbai Indians innings,Kieron Pollard walked in to bat,marking the soil of the batting crease with his heavy blade. Having been put into bat,the Mumbai scorecard read a shambolic 50/4 at the end of the 10th over,with Ashok Menaria’s left-arm spin causing great damage those of Sachin Tendulkar (stumped,7) and Ambati Rayudu (caught & bowled,11). But with Pollard and Andrew Symonds out in the middle,all hope was not lost in Jaipur.

Pollard hadn’t scored a single run in the fourth edition of the IPL,largely due to his lower middle-order batting position,but more to do with the fact that Mumbai’s powerful top-order had rarely given anyone else a chance. He had burst into national consciousness in the previous season with many a lusty hit,and everyone present at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium held their breath for his first real show of muscle in 2011. By the end of his innings though,the fans were glad that their visual misery didn’t last longer than 15 balls a space in which he scored a total of four runs.

Symonds bad,Pollard worse

Greeting Pollard and Symonds to the crease were the two Aussie Shanes skipper Warne and all-rounder Watson bowling in tandem. Pollard has made a name for himself by swatting bad bowling on subcontinental pitches. Pollard rarely ever goes after genuine pacers,and almost never against quality spinners. On Friday,he got a good dose of everything he dislikes.

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Warne made the ball spin a mile and Watson pitched the ball on a coin one that was placed just back of a length for the big Trinidadian. Pollard barely put bat on ball,let alone hammer it outside the park. And by keeping Pollard quiet,the middle overs ticked by,devoid of runs. For at the other end was Symonds,once a terrific smacker of the cricket ball,but now an over-the-hill shadow of his former self. And together,Pollard and Symonds tortured the souls of the avid cricket fan. It took the Trinidadian four balls (one more than he’d faced all IPL long prior to Friday) to get off the mark in the 12th over,before Watson riddled him with the short pitch stuff for an entire over,deliveries that struck every part of target Pollard but the wooden willow.

Such was the pleasure that the Rajasthan Royals camp derived from deconstructing the myth of Pollard that Warne decided that Siddharth Trivedi’s gentle medium pacers would also be enough to trouble the batsman. Softened by Trivedi in the 15th,Warne introduced Johan Botha in the 16th, who trapped him plumb in front of the wicket for his first wicket. As Pollard walked back,a total of 18 team runs had been accumulated since his arrival in 33 balls.

That man Botha again

Botha would bowl just one more over,but what an impact he would leave behind. Off the first ball of the 18th over,Botha cleaned up Symonds,who was the top-scorer of the Mumbai innings with a 26-ball 17. A couple of deliveries later,he cheated R Sathish into stepping out of the crease,and walking straight back to the pavilion with a stumping against his name. Sathish had occupied the crease for 6 balls without adding a run to the total. Mumbai were restricted to their lowest ever total of 94.

Foreigners pull their weight

Unlike the big foreign names in the Mumbai camp,every non-Indian playing for the Royals contributed in the home side’s win especially while chasing down the meagre total. Watson scored 26,Ross Taylor remained unbeaten on 13,and Botha finished off with a magnificent 45. Botha was dismissed for the first time in the tournament,earning an average of 177 in IPL IV. At the other end of the spectrum,Pollard’s average improved from 0 to 2,but his legend didnt.