Champions League T20: Rajasthan Royals vs Mumbai Indians - Match Review

Rohit Sharma was involved in a disastrous run-out

Mumbai Indians and the Rajasthan Royals locked horns in the first proper group stage fixture of the CLT20 2013 after the qualifying games saw Sunrisers Hyderabad and Otago Volts make it through to group ‘B’ and group ‘A’ respectively.

Mumbai Indians went into the game on the back of IPL success, but the absence of Malinga in the bowling line-up was always going to be a problem for them. On the other hand, the home team, Rajasthan Royals, had won all their eight home games at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur in the last IPL season, and knew the ground better than anybody else.

Just to test the patience of any cricket follower, the rain gods had to play their part in delaying the start of the game to 8.15 PM, and the state of the surface became a talking point having been under the covers for a good part of two hours. To everybody’s surprise, the wicket had more than a decent covering of grass to catch the eye of fast bowlers on show last night. Right through the IPL, Jaipur was always a difficult ground to defend on, the wicket was more batsmen friendly, and encouraged stroke play by and large, but yesterday it was anything but a good batting wicket.

The toss was always going to be crucial and the captain winning the toss would have wanted to bowl first. Rahul Dravid called correctly and unsurprisingly chose to field first, having gone into the game without a regular spinner. The side picked for the game had a well balanced look to it with five proper batsmen, Watson and Binny being the two all-rounders, and four bowlers. Mumbai Indians too had no real surprises on the team sheet, with Nathan Coulter-Nile coming in for Lasith Malinga and the rest of the side remaining the same.

Dwayne Smith opened along with Tendulkar and Dravid took everyone off guard by throwing the ball to Ashok Menaria, a  slow left arm orthodox bowler in the very first over of the innings. With a lot of grass on the wicket, there was no way Menaria could extract turn out of the surface, and both Tendulkar and Smith got through the first over with relative ease.

Mumbai Indians needed a good start to set the tone for the rest of the game, but the two paced nature of the wicket had Smith playing across the line to a Vikramjeet Malik delivery, which pitched short of a length, kept low and struck him on the inside part of his back leg, and it was difficult for Smith to persuade the umpire to give second thought to the decision.

In walked Dinesh Karthik, who wasn’t at his attacking best, leaving a lot of balls outside off stump and as time rolled on, a false shot seemed inevitable. In the last over of the power-play, Karthik walked down the pitch to Vikramjeet Malik and inside edged a length delivery back on to his off stump, and Mumbai couldn’t have got off to a worse start.

While all this was happening, Tendulkar focused on getting himself in and was playing some good drives off the front foot. His foot movement was good until Binny came into bowl in the eighth over of the innings and shaped the ball away from Tendulkar, who didn’t get his foot towards the pitch of the ball and edged it to Samson.