DLF IPL Season 5
Match 35 Pune Warriors Vs Deccan Chargers
at Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium, Pune
Deccan Chargers won the toss and elected to bat. Parthiv Patel
and Shikhar Dhawan gave a reasonably good start. Shikhar Dhawan fell for 16. Parthiv Patel, Sangakkara, Duminy and Jaggi contributed
some runs. But it was Cameron White who
stole the show with some magnificent batting.
He scored 78 off 46 balls. At one
stage the Chargers were poised to reach not more than 150. But White's extra efforts enabled them reach
a challenging total of 177/4.
Chasing
a stiff target of 178, Pune Warriors opened with a new combination of Manish
Pandey and Jesse Ryder. But they had a poor
start losing Ryder for 7. It was a soft
dismissal as Ryder offered a simple catch to get out. Ganguly came in at No.3 as usual and played
some good shots. He looked to
consolidate the innings when Manish Pandey got out bowled by Juan Theron trying
to guide the ball to third man. Ganguly
got out for 23 and the score read 73/3 in the 10th over. Needing over 100 runs from 10 overs, Pune
needed to step up the run rate from that point.
Unfortunately Uthappa played a sluggish innings once again and Samuels
wasted 8 deliveries to get out for 3 runs.
This brought Steven Smith at the crease with the required run rate over
15. Smith tried his best hitting 3 big
sixes. But he got out making 26 off 13
runs. Manhas and Alphonso Thomas tried their
best but it was too much form. Pune
Warriors lost the match by 18 runs. It
was a great shock for them having lost to Deccan Chargers, the weakest team
this season. In fact this is the first
win for the Chargers. Had Pune won this
match, they would have gone up to the 2nd spot in the Points Table. They still stay at the same No.6, but their
NRR took a beating and are slightly better than Mumbai Indians. Tomorrow Delhi meets Mumbai and if Mumbai
lose badly against them this margin will widen further. But a bad loss for Pune indeed. If they need to improve their chances of
making it to the Top 4, they have to drop Marlon Samuels and include Tamil
Iqbal as opener with Jesse Ryder. Smith
should be sent in at No.3 to keep the run rate healthy right from the start, at
least when they are chasing huge targets.
Even if Smith and Ryder get out, they can consolidate with enough depth
in batting. Some serious thinking is needed and stern
action has to be taken before it becomes too late.
No comments:
Post a Comment