INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE

WE witnessed one of the most "INTERESTING" match in the IPL yesterday between Kolkatta Knight Riders and Hyderabad Deccan Chargers, with more drama and suspense than a typical bollywood flick. Well with Shah Rukh Khan as the owner we could not have anticipated anything other than some brilliant drama..but this was least expected.

To start off with, the pitch seemed to be completely destroyed, i have never seen a worse pitch for T20. The pitch was extra dry and was 2 paced. A spin friendly track where the ball kept low and spun with the odd ball bouncing too high is not an ideal pitch for any form of cricket let alone the T20. Andrew Symonds described the pitch to be disgraceful and i though he was being modest.

The Deccans won the toss and banking upon a very formidable batting line up elected to bat first. Opening with Gilly and Rao, the chargers played the pitch well without loosing any wicket till the 4th over before Rao was caught at gully by Karthik off Sharma for 14. Laxman walks in and without troubling the scorers walks back in the very next over when he handed a simple catch to Shukla off Dinda. The aussie pair of symonds and Gilly take some risks hitting a few balls out of park with both looking extremely dangerous. Just when the pair was threatening to bring about havoc, Gilly gets out trying to heave kartik out of the park only to be caught at long leg by Hafeez.

Rohit Sharma, the Indian T20 hero walks in only to go back just as soon thanks to a brilliant catch by Saha. The visitors are now in deep trouble with 4 down for just 48 on the board in the 9th over.The wickets keep on tumbling in regular intervals so as to restrict the visitors to meagre 110.

The visitors face similar problems early on with few quick wickets falling with hardly any runs being scored. The batsmen cannot hit the ball and the bowlers find it difficult to control the spin or bounce resulting in a large number of extras.

McCullum was the first to go for the visitors at the score of 16. He was soon followed by Australian captain Ricky Ponting who was trapped Leg Before Wicket by Vaas. The hosts were in some trouble now but they are thrown into deeper trouble when Saha chips the ball in air only to be caught by Styris reducing the hosts to 23 for 3.

Hussey and Ganguly then slowly steady the ship playing very cautiously and carefully. When they started to cut loose Ganguly lost his stumps trying to it Ojha for a 6. With the hosts at 68-4 , the Eden Gardens was in complete silence but it was short lived as Hafeez hits Symonds for a 6, the crowd errupts again. Ojha gets his second wicket of the night when Hafeez tries to reverse-sweep him only to be caught by Symonds.

At 89-5 off 16.4 overs, suddenly one of the flood lights went off..with a lot of waiting finally the play resumed and the hosts cruised on to victory with an over to spare thanks to some brilliant batting by David Hussey.