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Mumbai Indians drubbed Chennai Super Kings in an unusually one-sided final for a maiden IPL Trophy. Needing to chase 149 on a slow pitch, Chennai Super Kings slipped into a disastrous position of 39 for 6 inside 8 overs. An explosive fifty from Skipper MS Dhoni could only reduce the margin of defeat to 23 runs and helped CSK to a modest 125 for 9.
Mumbai Indians drubbed Chennai Super Kings in an unusually one-sided final for a maiden IPL Trophy |
Mumbai Indians 148 for 9 (Pollard 60*, Bravo 4-42, Morkel 2-12) beat Chennai Super Kings 125 for 9 (Dhoni 63*, Johnson 2-19, Harbhajan 2-14) by 23 runs
Kept alive by Kieron Pollard's fighting 60 off 32, the Mumbai Indians
bowlers attacked their way to a first IPL title. Mumbai were struggling
at 52 for 4 in the 10th over, but Pollard batted through the innings to
take them 148 even as wickets kept falling as the other end.
Kieron Pollard top-scored against Super Kings again |
Lasith
Malinga and Mitchell Johnson then were too good for the Chennai Super
Kings batsmen, yorking and bouncing them out.
Super Kings' two big Indian batsmen fell to bouncers, their best batsman
was done in by a perfect Malinga yorker, and the rest fell under the
weight of the pressure and their own conservatism. MS Dhoni came in to
bat at No. 7, and Albie Morkel at 8. Twenty20 doesn't always favour
aggressive sides, in that wickets don't mean as much as they should, but
in this match it did.
Wickets were there aplenty for Super Kings too. There were three in the
first four overs as the ball seamed, and Mohit Sharma and Morkel bowled
smartly and steadily. When Dinesh Karthik fell in the 10th over, Super
Kings were arguably one big wicket away from killing the game. That one
big wicket never came.
The first ball Pollard faced he defended away for four. That was sweetly
played. He just pushed at a shortish delivery, but the ball scurried
along between the bowler and mid-off. He lost Ambati Rayudu after a
48-run fifth-wicket stand, but kept bringing up fours and sixes without
taking risks. His countryman, Dwayne Bravo, though, threatened to ruin
his plans.
Pollard had taken Mumbai to 129 for 6 after 18 overs, and would have
been looking for 40 more. A tight Chris Morris over later, Bravo kept
Pollard away from the strike through two wickets off the first three
balls of the last over. Pollard took the risk fourth ball and ran even
though the ball had reached the slip straight on a half-volley. Now
Pollard had two balls to do something about the score that read only
136.
And do something Pollard did. The first of the two balls was a low full
toss and he flicked it for a straight six. Then came a slower ball,
which pitched on a length, and Pollard dismissed it out of his presence.
Twelve runs taken off the last two balls, Mumbai were reminded by their
analyst that they had scored 148 in their first match against Super
Kings too. Pollard had scored 57 not out then too. They won by nine back
then.
This time, though, they would need something special. Malinga, asked to
bowl the first over, delivered nothing less than special. A swinging
yorker first squeezed under Michael Hussey's bat. Out came Suresh Raina.
In came a backward short leg. Out came an accurate bouncer. Raina
fended at it while looking towards third man. Backward short leg took
the catch.
Super Kings now sent crisis man S Badrinath ahead of the bigger hitters.
If consolidation was his brief, Badrinath exceeded it by driving at a
wide length ball from Mitchell Johnson and edging it through. Still no
Dhoni. Bravo and Ravindra Jadeja didn't take too long, and Dhoni had to
finally come out at 36 for 5 in the seventh over. However, he ran out of
batsmen soon with M Vijay falling to a Johnson bouncer and Morkel to a
full Pragyan Ojha delivery, and actually had to begin farming the strike
and refuse singles with six overs still to go.
Most of Dhoni's 63 off 45 after the match had been lost, and only gave
Mumbai an extended time on the field to celebrate the title even when
the match was on.
Toss and Teams: Mumbai Indians have won the toss and elected to bat first in the IPL 6 Final against the Chennai Super Kings at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Both the teams are unchanged from their last games. The pitch for the contest is on the drier side and it could assist the slow bowlers big time.
Mumbai Indians : Dwayne Smith, Aditya Tare, Dinesh Karthik(w), Rohit Sharma (C), Kieron Pollard, Ambati Rayudu, Harbhajan Singh, Rishi Dhawan, Mitchell Johnson, Lasith Malinga, Pragyan Ojha
Chennai Super Kings: Michael Hussey, Murali Vijay, Suresh Raina, MS Dhoni (C&WK), Ravindra Jadeja, S Badrinath, Dwayne Bravo, Albie Morkel, Chris Morris, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohit Sharma
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