Kochi demolish new-look Rajasthan
Kochi dismantled a struggling Rajasthan to keep their outside chances of a play-off berth alive with a massive margin of 8 wickets and more than thirteen overs to spare. Rajasthan changed half of their team in an attempt to stem the rot but that could not prevent a fourth successive loss. Kochi took full advantage of a team in complete disarray and smashed their way to the target of 98 runs.
The pitch at the Holkar stadium produced more than 300 runs last time around in the match between Kochi and Punjab. Thus, Kochi captain Mahela Jayawardene had no hesitation in bowling first. Rajasthan made a mess of it and folded at 97 runs with 9 balls remaining in the innings. Kochi came out and smashed these runs in no time to boost their net run rate. After this win, Kochi still have a mathematical chance of qualifying, of course with some ifs and buts.
Kochi openers came out firing on all cylinders in reply to the paltry Rajasthan total. McCullum was particularly severe on the bowlers, Shaun Tait going for six and two boundaries in the first over. He however got a couple of reprieves in the same over, Tait clean bowled him off a no-ball and a catch was dropped when the wicket-keeper Pinal Shah collided with a fielder. Though, Kochi captain Jayawardene who played his last game of IPL-4, was dismissed in the next over, the runs came thick and fast. The hosts reached the mid-point in the chase only in the fourth over and only one team was winning the match after that. Kochi overhauled the total in style with a flurry of boundaries and the one sided contest was done and dusted in little more than seven overs of the second innings.
To be fair to the Rajasthan bowlers, they just didn’t have a defendable total on a decent batting strip with very short boundaries. Shaun Tait as always was erratic with his line and length, new recruit Jacob Oram was all over the place.
The prospect of defending a total on good batting surface played on the minds of Rajasthan batsmen and they tried too hard and lost the plot. Three wickets fell for 8 runs in the first mini-collapse, Shane Watson and young Rahane tried to steady the ship briefly. Then came the killer blow, the Australian was cleaned up by pacer Parameswaran, the batting just fell apart after that. Seven wickets fell for 34 runs as Rajasthan batters looked to hit the bowlers out of ground.
The surprise package for Kochi was the bowling of Brad Hodge who notched up career best figures of 4 for 13. The usually unreliable S Sreesanth also had impressive returns, two wickets for 16 runs.
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