Hyderabad shatter Punjab play-off dream
Punjab were hoping for a fairytale ending to their IPL-4 campaign but the dream of a maiden title came crashing down due to a listless fielding effort and they followed that up with an ordinary show in the batting department. Hyderabad made most of the poor Hyderabad fielding and piled on a mammoth 198 runs mainly due to a fiery opening partnership led by Shikhar Shawan. In spite of a brave fifty by Skipper Adam Gilchrist, Punjab fell short of the target by a huge margin of 82 runs with leggie Amit Mishra claiming a hat-trick.
When the match began, there were all sorts of permutations and combinations possible, Punjab could finish in the play-offs, any of Kolkata or Mumbai could have been knocked out but in the end a tame surrender by the Priety Zinta-owned side put to rest all speculations and the top-four have now been decided. On the contrary, Hyderabad had nothing to lose in this match; they extended their winning streak to three in a row for the first time in this year’s IPL.
After a dismal show in the field, Punjab still had some chance in the chase as the picturesque Dharamshala has been a high-scoring venue. But, a dramatic middle order collapse was enough to shut them out of the contest. Punjab’s explosive top order trio of Valthaty, Adam Gilchrist and Shaun Marsh held the key in Punjab reply but two of them who lead the run scoring charts were dismissed within a span of eight deliveries to dent the chase. Gilchrist kept his team in the hunt for a while with a fighting 51 off 37 balls punctuated by half-a-dozen boundaries and two maximums. Once, he departed the match was all but over for the home team as they lacked serious hitters down the order.
On a strip that has something for the bowlers the varied Hyderabad attack was always going to be difficult to manage for any batting line-up. Dale Steyn got prodigious swing early on; Valthaty became his first victim when the score was just 9. The most consistent batsman in IPL history, Shaun Marsh fell after a couple of boundaries trying to hit Duminy out of the park. Gilly’s dismissal started the slide for Punjab as the batsmen got out quickly in search of big hits. With the asking rate getting to unmanageable proportions, Hyderabad bowlers reaped a rich haul; Amit Mishra got three in three as the home side went from 102 for 5 to 116 all out. Daniel Christian also bowled in good areas and was rewarded with the key scalps of Gilchrist and Dinesh Karthik.
In total contrast to the Hyderabad effort in the field, Punjab made a series of horrendous errors to let the visitors literally bat them out of the tie. Both openers, Shikhar Dhawan and Ravi Teja should have been dismissed in the very first over, instead survived 13 overs to put on a record 131 for the first wicket, their team’s highest opening stand this season. The horror show for Punjab continued as they grassed chances with the lot of generosity. Even their ground fielding was school boy like. Teja muscled his way to a 41-ball 60, his partner fell short of maiden century in this format by just 5 runs, his bludgeoning knock was full of big hits along the carpet- 14 boundaries and a crowd killer part of the package. Even though, the Punjab bowlers extracted some movement early-on but they erred too many times during the innings to allow the opposition to put up a big total.
All in all, Punjab have only themselves to blame for the mess, they had a good chance to qualify with Mumbai struggling to find its feet and would have been vulnerable against Kolkata. However, that doesn’t count now as the only reality for Preity Zinta and her boys is that they have been knocked out of IPL-4.
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