Mumbai, Chennai Strengthen their place in top 4

The Monday Double Header saw the close finishes in both the matches where the chasing teams grabbed win in the last over of the game. Mumbai beat Bangalore in the first match while Chennai beat Kolkata in the evening competition.

Mumbai Indians vs Royal Challengers Bangalore:  Rayudu, Pollard took Mumbai home

MI 173/5 (Rayudu 81*, Pollard 52*) beat RCB 171/ 6 (Agarwal 64, Dilshan 47) by five wickets
Mumbai clinched a last over win against the Bangalore in the 62nd competition of the Indian Premier League season 5. After being reduced to 51 for 5 in the 7.5 overs, Ambatti Rayudu and Kiron Pollard took control and guided their team to the victory. Both the players started slowly and after some running misunderstandings in the initial phase they got settled. Mumbai needed 14 runs in the last over of the match for the win which they made with two balls to spare. Mumbai got in to the second position in the league table with the thrilling win.
Earlier the Mumbai skipper won the toss and put Bangalore in batting which seemed to be a very good decision as they gave early blows to the opposition. Gayle (6) and Kohli (3) got out cheaply within the first three overs of the innings. Saurabh Tiwari (21) and Dilshan (47) put on a 36 run partnership before Tiwary hit his own wicket. Bangalore most trusted batsman Ab de Villiers (14) failed to to do what he has been doing in the season for his team. Mayank Agarwal came in with only 87 on the board on the loss four crucial wickets. Agarwal held his nerves and hit 64 runs off 30 balls to take his team to a respectable total of 171.
Mumbai Indian and Royal Challengers Bangalore  players got involved in the heated argument in the end which harmed the sportsmanship of the game. It seem that the Bangalore boys were not able to accept the defeat and out busted to show the disappointment.

Chennai Super Kings vs Kolkata Knight Riders: Bravo’s last-ball six keeps Chennai afloat

CSK 160/5 (Hussey 56, Narine 2-14) beat KKR 158/6 (Gambhir 62, Jakati 2-26) by five wickets
Last ball six of Dwayne Bravo (11*) kept Chennai in the hunt for the spot in the play offs of the Indian Premier league season 5. MEK Hussey and Murali Vijay (36) gave Chennai a good start at the top but the Kolkata mystery spinner Sunil Narine put break on their innings in the 11 th over. Narine dismissed both the batsman in the same over on the score of 97 without troubling the scorers. Raina and du Plessis tried to provide solidarity to the inning but both got doing much. The skipper MS Dhoni took control in his hand smashing 28 of 21 before getting out to Rajat Bhatia in the final over. After all ups and down Chennai needed 5 of the penultimate bowl of the match which was hit out of the ground by Bravo and took a win.
The Kolkata’s inning also saw the similar situation with Gambhir and McCullum (37)giving solid start  and then falling in the successive overs. Middle order collapse and poor shot selection was the highlights of the Kolkata innings. Debabrata Das 19 of 10 balls in the later part of the innings took Kolkata to a respectable total.
Chennai strengthened their spot in the top four with win the win while Kolkata chances of getting to the top diminished.

Posted on May 15 2012. Filed under IPL 5. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry