IPL 6: Mumbai Indians fall through

Mumbai Indians missed the boat for the first time at Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore. The buck can be passed on to the big names (Ricky Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble, John Wright etc) in the team who ended up making the team appear nothing more than a bunch of ‘white elephants’.

The match went down to the wire with RCB emerging victorious on the last ball of the match. Four runs were needed for a win on the last ball. Pollard was at the crease. He had hit a four on the previous ball, the first ball that he faced. He could hit another to snatch a win for MI. But the star of the last over, who had taken two wickets at the death, Vinay Kumar delivered a yorker that Pollard could only manage to nudge for a single. It was a challenge for RCB to break the jinx and the young skipper Virat Kohli did it this time around, making it clear that the Chinnaswamy Stadium is no longer a second home to the Mumbai Indians. On paper, Mumbai was the team who had more ingredients to come out on top. Unfortunately, MI lost a close fight. They could have ended up the victors had they deployed their resources better.

From the very first day, the focus has been on the team’s new skipper Ricky Ponting and the fact that he joined forces with his once -arch rivals, Sachin Tendulkar and Harbhajan Singh. During the pre-match discussion and even in the commentary box, everybody appeared so overwhelmed by the two stalwarts, Ponting and Tendulkar, taking the crease together, that talks revolved around the amount of cricket they have played and their pairing as openers. Even the match for a while took the back seat. It seemed that even the team could not manage the star power and got carried away.

RCB’s good yet erratic batting line-up depends heavily on Chris Gayle, who, yet again, single handedly carried them home; whereas Mumbai Indians, with its star-studded team, failed to get past the winning line. Dinesh Kartik’s 60 from 37, an innings which picked up momentum pretty late, went in vain. After he fell, no other batsman rose to the occasion to keep pace with the required run rate to avoid the last ball pressure situation. Two batsmen who were wasted were Kieron Pollard and Ambati Rayudu. With no Dwayne Smith or Aiden Blizzard in the playing XI, had Ponting promoted Rayudu as an opener and himself batted at his usual number three position, maybe MI would have got a better star. They were not chasing a big total, but the slow run rate in the initial overs upped the required rate. The need of the hour was that the big stroke maker Pollard be sent ahead of Rohit Sharma to give RCB a run for their money. As it was Ricky Ponting’s first IPL match as a skipper and his fifth after a lapse of five IPL seasons, one can hope that he will come good in the following matches both as batsman and as skipper.

Looking at the green top of the pitch, playing four seamers was a sensible move. But Lasith Malinga’s absence made MI look incomplete. Hopefully Malinga will be available for selection in the next match. Ricky Ponting will undoubtedly devise new strategies and implement his wherewithal more astutely in his next outing against Chennai Super Kings in yet another away game.