Its now Harbhajan’s turn to tide in the winning ways of Mumbai Indians
as he single handedly brought the Mumbai Indians bag into the match with a blinder of an innings and opened the bowling to pick up three crucial wickets.Deccan Chargers who looked menacing in the last 3 encounters seems to carry the momentum till the 17th over of the Mumbai Innings where even a Tendulkar’s presence could not be converted to a much bigger score as MI kept losing wickets at regular intervals.And when Sachin edged a rising RP singh delivery to Gilchrist it looked like 150 is too much of an ask for MI.In came Harbhajan,with his trademark free flowing batting style smashed unbeaten 49 of mere 18 deliveries and gave a complete momemtum shift to Mumbai and Tendulkar was smart enough to handle him the new ball and he carried the confidence into his bowling and accounting for the dangerous Gilchrist with a brilliant low catch by Tendulkar.Then the deadly pair of Zaheer and Malinga took over to get 3 wickets apiece to finish the formalities as the Deccan chargers never looked like being in the hunt.
In the earlier match Chennai was outclassed by the Royals at Ahmedabad though the 17 runs margin conceals the competitiveness of the match to be a closer one.
Chennai never looked like getting there in the second half of their innings and a hatrick of powerfully hit sixes by Albie Morkel of Shane warne’s last over settled the final scores to a more tighter finish.Royals did exactly what they know the best by putting up a good score batting first and putting lid on the scoring while bowling on a wicket which gets slower and lower in the second half.It would be interesting to see their strategies in the second round of matches as they would be playing four of their matches away from home.It was once again the home ground advantage for them today though they played the good enough cricket to keep them stay ahead in all the 4 winning matches on the trot.
It was Naman ojha turn today as he scored 80 runs and others rallied around to get to a decent 177.Chennai started blasting with Murali vijay and Hayden and they kept loosing wickets after the powerplay and never looked in the Hunt.Its doomsday spelt for the Chennai Super kings and it is very hard for them to win, atleast 6 of their 7 remaining matches to remain in the race for semifinals.
