Thursday, April 23, 2009

DECCAN CHARGERS MAKES IT TWO IN A ROW

The Deccan Chargers won their second straight match in IPL season 2 with a well fought win over the Banglore Royal Challengers. The Chargers seems to have worked hard on their game after a miserable performance in first edition with only 2 wins in 16 games. With the kind of aggression they show with the bat, ball and on the field the Deccan Chargers have made it clear that they are not mere minnows this time around. If they can maintain the same momentum and intensity throughout the season it may be they who write the rags to riches story which Rajasthan Royals did last time. Adam Gilchrist, the captain led from the front with a blistering 71, with good support from the classy Rohit Sharma who scored 52. The Chargers ended their innings at 184, the highest team score recorded in this season till date. The Banglore Royal Challengers put up a good fightback led by the solid Rahul Dravid (48) and Virat Kohli (50) only to finally end up 24 runs short of the target.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Gayle powers Knight riders to 11 run victory

Kolkata knight riders registered their first win in ipl season 2,in a rain interrupted match at Kingsmead,Durban which was decided by the Duckworth-Lewis rule.The curse of the rain Gods seems to be haunting the Punjab kings X11 even after putting up a pretty solid performance with the bat after, loosing their opening match to the Delhi daredevils in a similar fashion. After losing opener Karan Goel for a duck (thanks to some tight seam bowling from Ishant sharma),the Punjab kings soon gained momentum with some good strikes from Irfan Pathan who was promoted to no:3 , supported by Ravi Bopara. Then it was Kolkata’s turn as they got the much needed breakthrough through ex-captain Sourav Ganguly who sent both Irfan and Bopara to the pavilion in the same over.But Kolkata could not capitalize on this as Punjab captain Yuvraj Singh got into business and built a solid partnership with Kumar Sagakkara to take Punjab Kings to a decent total with good support from Mahela Jayawardene later on, ending the innings at 158.But misery came this time around for the Kings in the form of Chris Gayle,the big hitting West Indian who smashed 4 sixes and 2 fours in an unbeaten 44 off 26 balls to take the Knight riders to 79 in 9.2 overs, before heavy rain stopped play.