IPL 6: MI vs RCB: Flops of the match

The Mumbai Indians demolished the Royal Challengers as they ran home as comfortable winners by 58 runs at the Wankhede Stadium.

It was one of those rare performances where every single player had something to contribute to the victory and it shows with this list of flops of the match, which is entirely composed of the Bangalore players:

R Vinay Kumar

Vinay Kumar has improved vastly as a bowler over the last few seasons. Although his Test debut didn’t quite go the way he would have liked, he has shown consistency in the limited overs formats and continually been a top performer in the domestic circuit for a good five years.

In the IPL too, his consistency has stood out as a top weapon in his armour along with his ability to find the yorkers in the death overs and this has ensured that RCB’s fragility, as far as domestic bowling is concerned, has been erased – and very well, as his 14 wickets and pursuit of the Purple Cap have indicated.

However, he had a night to forget against the Mumbai Indians after a poor first and second over which provided Dwayne Smith a great deal of momentum in his innings, along with 26 easy runs.

His last over only went for two, but his first two changed the tempo of the Mumbai innings.

Tillakaratne Dilshan

Life hasn’t been easy for Tillakaratne Dilshan, player of the tournament at the 2009 T20 World Cup and stacked with a reputation of being one of the most destructive opening batsmen in the world.

He didn’t have the best of seasons last year and was often accused of trying to hit the ball too hard instead of trying to make a good connection.

Things don’t look too different this year either, as his strike rate of well under a run-a-ball endorses. There are quite a few liabilities in the IPL this year and Dilshan is guilty of being one of them as his presence in the team doesn’t allow the inclusion of either of Muralitharan, Henriques or Christian, apart from keeping an in-form Mayank Agarwal out.

His 13 off 18 balls built more pressure on both RCB as well as Gayle instead of easing it.

Chris Gayle

When the Royal Challengers were posed a target of a 195 runs, there wasn’t any doubt about who needed to be in charge of sketching the blueprint for the chase.

And it was because Chris Gayle was in that Bangalore side that the chase didn’t appear as tall an order as it actually was. Having individually scored 175 in the last game and by virtue of all the destruction he has done ever since he was signed up for the franchise, his presence was something of a necessity if Bangalore wanted to get anywhere close to the target.

Unfortunately for them, it wasn’t his day as the pressure built by the opening bowlers, and Mitchell Johnson in particular, got the better of Chris Gayle’s temperament and led to a pretty tame dismissal and one that he would like to forget as soon as possible.