IPL 4

When Shane Warne and Mahela Jayawardene walked out to the centre at the Holkar Cricket Stadium in Indore, both their teams were in with a mathematical chance of qualifying for the playoffs. But the chances were so remote that Warne, playing the penultimate game of his career, decided to go in with 6 changes to his Royals squad. Botha and Taylor both weren’t included in the starting lineup while Tait and Oram got an opportunity. The Tuskers were more optimistic of going through to the next round and decided to stick to their tried and tested with Prashant being the only new face in the squad.

There were more surprises in store as Watson didn’t walk out to bat along with Dravid. It was Fazal who opened the innings and he didn’t last long as he was trapped in front of an RP Singh fulltoss. Sreesanth and RP Singh held their line and didn’t allow Royals to score many. The patience finally bore fruit as Sreesanth got Dravid to nick a lovely away going delivery. Sree followed it up with the wicket of Rahane as the Royals fell to 26/3. That didn’t affect Watson as a lot as he tried to take advantage of the short boundary meting out special treatment to debutant Prashant as the Royals clawed back to 56/3 by the end of the eighth over. But Parameswaran got a ball to nip back in and Watson was found guilty of playing all over it. That was the beginning of the decline of the Royals as Hodge was introduced into the attack. Pinal Shah couldn’t clear long on while Oram and Warne were cleaned up. Meneria tried to salvage some late pride for the Royals but once he was out trying to hit Hodge out of the park, the Royals had limped to 89/9 and were eventually dismissed for 97.

Chasing 98 was never going to be a problem but Kochi needed to get these runs quickly to improve their net run rate and have a better chance of progressing into the playoffs and Tait only helped their cause by bowling a couple of no balls in the opening over, the second one had McCullum’s stumps cartwheeling. A six and a couple of fours of the first over and the Tuskers were off and running. McCullum greeted his Kiwi mate Oram by casually flicking him for three sixes in an over. Oram had the wicket of Jayawardene but Kochi only needed quick runs as Parthiv got off the mark with a six of Tait. McCullum was dismissed for 29 of 12 balls but Hodge came in completed the formalities with 33 of 17 deliveries as Kochi reached the target in only 7.2 overs thus knocking out the Royals.

Kochi now have 12 points from 13 games and still have a chance of qualifying but for that they need to beat the Chennai Super Kings and also hope that the Knight Riders and Kings XI Punjab don’t win any of their matches.

Tags: Cricket, IPL, IPL 2011, IPL 4, Kochi Tuskers Kerala, KTK, Mahela Jayawardene, Rajasthan Royals, RR, Shane Warne