Mumbai Indians hit Deccan Chargers for a 'six' by CricketArchive Staff Reporter

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Scorecard:	Deccan Chargers v Mumbai Indians
Player:	ST Jayasuriya, SR Tendulkar, DJ Bravo, AC Gilchrist, Shahid Afridi, Y Venugopal Rao, LPC Silva, AM Nayar, RP Singh
Event:	Indian Premier League 2007/08

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DateLine: 19th May 2008

 

The glorious run of victories that the Mumbai Indians has seen in this tournament has almost reached unbelievable proportions, and today’s match was no different. After losing their first four successive matches, the Mumbai Indians won their sixth consecutive match today against the Deccan Chargers to take them to the fourth position with 12 points. Deccan Chargers, in turn, continued their losing spree, perched at the bottom of the table with only two victories.

 

The Chargers’ skipper, Adam Gilchrist won the toss and elected to field first. However, Sanath Jayasuriya seems to be a man possessed these days, as he hit R.P. Singh and Nuwan Zoysa out of the attack. It was only a brain wave by Gilchrist to get a spinner – Venugopal Rao – on that bought him Jayasuriya’s wicket in the third over. Sachin Tendulkar made 23, while the rest of the batting contributed their bit, with same late order hitting by youngster Abhishek Nayar and Dwayne Bravo seeing the Mumbai team to 178/7 in the 20 overs. Nayar incidentally was the highest scorer with a 38, where as R.P. Singh picked up 3 wickets, but proved to expensive yet again, giving away 35 off his four.

 

The Deccan Chargers’ reply was shoddy, Gilchrist was dropped, and then Shahid Afridi departed first ball for a duck. Dilhara Fernando, who had been brought into the team to replace an injured Shaun Pollock, scalped two wickets off two deliveries, Gilchrist and Rohit Sharma to peg them further back. It was only some late order lusty hitting by Venugopal Rao – who scored his second fifty of IPL – and Ravi Teja, that kept the Chargers in the match, but with no support forthcoming from the rest of the batsmen, the team fell twenty five runs short of the target.

 

Dwayne Bravo won the Man-of-the-Match award for his superlative all round effort. Incidentally, Bravo was supposed to leave the country earlier for his series against Australia, but he stayed back for one extra match when he was promised by Mr. Mukesh Ambani, that he would be allowed to use his private jet! What a wise decision in the end!