Saturday, April 26, 2008

Chennai & Rajasthan prevail !



That it is a mind game is proved by Shane Warne. He won the toss, put Dravdis' men to bat and bowled them out for 138. Their game plan was class. Dravid, Chanderpaul and Kallis were held in the deep. Except for some lusty hitting by Ross Taylor (44) and Praveen Kumar (34), none of the other batsmen could excel. Munaf got 2 wickets, Trivedi 1, Warne 1 and Watson 2.

Shane Watson was as solid as ever, playing the sheet anchor role and scoring 61 not out. Graeme Smith became successful for the second time and scored 49. Yousuf Pathan scored only 21, but the innings was embellished with 5 fours.

In the other match, Dhoni's men proved to be formidable. Jacob Oram took both the wickets of McCullum and Ponting to reduce the Knight Riders to 32/2, from which they never recovered. He also took the wicket of Karthik ang got the Man of the Match award.

Laxmi Ratan Shukla played well for his 42 and the innings folded up at 147/9.

A glorious stand of 66 by Parthiv Patel and Hayden saw the Super Kings on to a solid start. When Patel perished for 21, in walked Dhoni and both Dhoni and Hayden saw the Super Kings home with some excellent batting !

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