Wed, 11 May 2011 - IP Rajasthan vs IP Bangalore, IPL 2011, 55th Match - Bulletin

Bangalore steamroll Rajasthan at home

Shane Warne would have hoped for a win in his last home match but a clinical performance by Bangalore spoiled his party and the home team were thrashed by 9 wickets at the SMS stadium in Jaipur. Bangalore didn’t have to break into a sweat during the whole match as Rajasthan lacked quality in all the departments to pose any serious challenge to them. After this defeat, the home team are virtually out of contention for a top-four spot as Bangalore climbed to number two on the points chart.

The news of Daniel Vettori not playing in the game must have given the Warne-led side some confidence, but his replacement Virat Kohli promptly chose to field after winning the toss. Batting first has never been Rajasthan’s forte and that showed as they don’t have the batting depth required to set a big total on the board. They could score only 146 runs and in reply the powerful Bangalore batting made an easy meal of it.

Another man playing his last match of this season, Tilkeratne Dilshan ended his campaign on a bright note scoring a brisk 38 runs off just 24 balls. His partner Chris Gayle however, has been in the form of his life. Today, he decided to prolong the punishment for opposition; caution was mixed with brute power. Still his unbeaten knock of 70 runs came off just 44 balls with 4 sixes. The young captain, Kohli also joined in the party stroking 39 runs.

The complete domination of the Bangalore batsmen meant that it was a disappointing day for the Rajasthan bowlers, save for Warne who still had some tricks up his sleeve. The only wicket to fall expectedly came through a drifting leg-break, Dilshan tried to launch it over the leg-side boundary instead, was caught.

Earlier, the Rajasthan batsmen let the initial momentum slip to concede the ground to opposition and managed only a middling total of 146 runs on the board. The determination to get off to a good start in this do-or-die match was there from the very beginning of their innings. Shane Watson and Rahul Dravid pushed the scoring at a decent rate getting to 73 runs just under ten overs. Though they did lay a solid foundation for the innings, there was nothing extraordinary about it as both had a strike rate under 120.

After that, the Rajasthan innings never took off, they kept losing wickets and the scoring on a good batting surface dwindled. The openers were sent back in space of three deliveries to kill any chances of acceleration. The fact that the neither of the settled batsmen could kick-on to make a match-winning contribution hurt the team cause. Watson and Dravid scored 34 and 37 respectively, the latter hitting half a dozen crisp classic boundaries. The hopes of a late flourish also vanished when the Ross Taylor and Johan Botha were dismissed within three runs, the Kiwi once again falling to his favorite leg-side heave only to find the Kaif at the deep square leg boundary.

The Bangalore bowling did remarkably well even though Vettori did not play. S Arvind did the damage with a three wicket burst that knocked the stuffing out of the Rajasthan batting. He was rewarded for keeping the ball in the good areas as batsmen tried to go after him. Zaheer Khan was his usual self, economical even when Rajasthan were going well. Stand-in captain Virat Kohli tried himself, his Chris Harris type fast cutters kept the lid on scoring with three economical overs.

The fortress for Rajasthan has came apart in the last two matches, for warne it was an anti-climax of sorts as two back to back loses on the same ground on which he dominated for so long finally brought down curtains on his last campaign in IPL. Now, he will be playing just for pride.