The Royal Challengers (RC) may have lost the finals in the last edition of the IPL, but are fast looking like the team to beat, after reaching the top of the table with their Saturday night’s victory over the previous table toppers Mumbai Indians (MI).
 Their chase never seemed off course, with the first wicket stand of Jacques Kallis and Manish Pandey putting together 85 in 9.5 overs, aided by a 27 ball 40 from Pandey. Tendulkar threw all the arsenal at his disposal from Harbhajan to Malinga to a fierce Zaheer Khan, but a solid Kallis (66n.o, 55b, 10x4) saw RC overhaul the target with 7 wickets to spare.
MI, riding on the confidence of two 200 plus scores, elected to bat and were seemingly being steered to a good position by Tendulkar and Tiwary, after losing 2 early wickets. This was until they lost 4 wickets for 5 runs, 3 of them in 1 over of the chief wrecker, Vinay Kumar, including that of Tendulkar who was bowled playing inside the line of the delivery.
Dale Steyn was ferocious in his first spell trapping Jayasuriya for 2, while Kallis accounted for Tare. Sathish and Kieron Pollard put together a partnership to set it up for a final onslaught, which however, never happened from them. Pollard, after a big six off Praveen Kumar, succumbed trying to dispatch a full toss of Dale Steyn, with Sathish following him to the pavilion with a spectacular, one-handed catch from Dravid. A 9-ball 23 from Zaheer Khan, with 16 runs from the last over, got Mumbai Indians to a fighting 151/9.
RR win for the first time
The first match of Saturday saw the limping Rajasthan Royals (RR) put one over an insipid Kolkatta Knight Riders (KKR) at Ahmedabad and get their first points of the tournament.
KKR, chasing 169 runs, started meekly, accumulating only 59 runs for the loss of 1 wicket, in the first 9 overs, leaving them with 110 to win off 66 balls. Warne meanwhile relied heavily on the slower bowlers on a stop-and-go type of wicket to do the job for him.
The partnership between Pujara and Hodge for the second wicket ended with Trivedi bowling Pujara for 29 off 25 balls.
Hodge, continuing with Ganguly, made 36 before he was also bowled while charging Pathan. This left KKR requiring more than 13 runs per over, with the pitch seemingly playing slower and slower. Owais Shah and Ganguly struggled for boundaries, with Ganguly holing out for a hard worked 33 off 29 balls. Two sixers from Owais Shah were really the only moments of cheer in an otherwise frustrating chase for the KKR fans, which ended at 134/5, including a direct run out of Angelo Mathews without scoring.
Missing Graeme Smith and Dimitri Mascarenhas through injuries, Shane Warne for RR won the toss and preferred to set KKR a target. When Lumb was plumb in front of the wicket off the very first ball of Dhinda, Warne’s heart must have skipped a beat, but the first 6 overs produced a healthy 56 runs, with 2 wickets lost. Then Naman Ohja ran himself out with an accurate throw from the deep, for 27, and RR were 80/3, when the strategic time out was taken after 9 overs. This also meant that the backbone of the Royals, Yusuf Pathan was now in and had 11 overs to weave his magic. Playing a delicate glide for four off the first over he faced of Shane Bond, he ensured that the over accounted for 12 runs.
However, Pathan failed to deliver and Dhinda did what Bond could not, getting Pathan to mistimed a pull-shot. Overs 11 to 15 produced only 32 runs. Jhunjhunwala got out at a crucial time in the 18th over, with Ishant Sharma inducing a false stroke off a slower ball safely caught by Ganguly. Paras Dogra walked in and walked out, edging the first ball of Sharma to a diving wicketkeeper, Saha who pouched it at full stretch. With Warne also sweetly timing a chip shot directly into the safe hands of long off, RR could just not build momentum into the latter part of their innings, until the last over where Adam Vogues deposited Sharma twice over the ropes and RR finished up with 168/7.
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