Sun, 01 Apr 2011 - IP Chennai vs IP Hyderabad, IPL 2011, 39th Match - Bulletin

Chennai humble Hyderabad at home

Chennai overcame a opener Sunny Sohal’s early assault to beat Hyderabad by 19 runs to continue on their top form. The Hyderabad loss was a combination of some brilliant show with the ball during the second half of Hyderabad batting effort and reckless shot selection from Hyderabad batsmen.

Sohal’s 56 off 30 balls including six boundaries and four sixes made mockery of Chennai bowling lineup with visitors racing to 71 inside seven overs. The young batsman played some incredible shots to put home team on the backfoot before left arm spinner Shadab Jakati spun the web around the batsmen.

He had Sohal clean bowled when batsman tried to go for Kevin Petersonesque switch hit and followed it with the wicket of another opener Shekhar Dhawan in 11th over with score reading 90.

The skipper Kumar Sangakkara and Bharat Chipli partnership was steady dealing mostly in singles and doubles with former unfurling a straight drive and slog sweep in between. Jakati was again in the thick of action taking a good catch to dismiss Chipli off Morne Morkel and it was in 16th over Hyderabad were dealt with a serious blow.

Sanga contributed to that when he tried to play a lap sweep off Doug Bollinger only to see his middle stump disturbed.

This lifted Chennai and their game was raised to another level. Bollinger and Morkel superb three last overs to complete yet another MS Dhoni led resurgence. Hyderabad will have lot to ponder squandering a winning position to home team that did seize on the crucial moments clinically.

Chennai could post a respectable score on the board courtesy some ordinary bowling and several glaring blips in the field. In all three catches were dropped by the Hyderabad fielders-Cameron white dropped a dolly when Michael Hussey had made only 10 runs, Suresh Raina given a reprieve by Harmeet Singh and Ishant Sharma grassed one from MS Dhoni. Hussey and Raina went on to make substantial scores of 46 and 59 respectively that set the stage for the lower order to the end the innings with a flourish.

Albie Morkel hit three monstrous hits off Ishant Sharma (19th), the longest which the biggest hit of the tournament thus far and landed outside the stadium. Such was the domination of the Chennai in the later stages that last five overs yielded as many as 69 runs.

The late inning fireworks apart, Chennai innings started rather slowly as batsman scratched around with Murli Vijay consuming 14 balls for his three runs before being castled by Pragyan Ojha. Things could have been worse for the home team had White held on to a simple chance at Square Leg in the same over. Hussey then combined with Raina to forge a steady partnership of 60 runs followed by another 58 between Raina and skipper Dhoni.

Hussey hit five fours in his 41-ball stay while Raina creamed two sixes and half a dozen fours for his second 50-plus score this season that came off 35 balls. With Raina gone and Dhoni scoring at an under 100 strike rate, Chennai needed someone to get them over 160-mark and Morkel did exactly that. Last three balls of Ishant’s spell followed a big, bigger and biggest sequence. First six went as far as into stands, second one landed on the roof and the last, biggest measuring 109m, disappeared out of the stadium forcing a ball change.

Among the Hyderabad bowlers, Pragyan Ojha made intelligent use of the slow Chepauk strip conceding only 26 runs in four overs and picked up three wickets. He also must have felt unlucky as three catches went down of his bowling.