IPL: Kolkata Tough It Out To Beat Deccan

It was supposed to be a match between the perennial under-achievers and the punching bag of the tournament. And it turned out to be exactly that. The wicket was slow and difficult to bat on, and with both teams trying to undo each other in mediocre cricket, the game became one of attrition. The team from Kolkata finally prevailed thanks to some cool nerves shown by Manoj Tiwary at the end.

Deccan lost Sangakkara early, but Shikhar Dhawan kept them going from the other end and scored a valuable half century. However the loss of Parthiv Patel threw them off, leading to another insipid display by the rest of the batsmen. The last eight overs fetched them a mere 42 runs. Sunil Narine and Balaji bagged a couple of wickets each in their miserly spells, with the former confounding batsmen as is he wont. The indefatigable Brett Lee conceded a mere fifteen runs in his four overs to claim the wicket of White.

KKR in their reply lost the overrated McCullum early. Gambhir tried to consolidate the innings with Bisla, but the latter lost his wicket to a top spinner from Mishra. Kallis joined the captain in the middle only to see Gambhir departing to an ill timed straight drive into the mid off’s hands. With 54 runs needed of nine overs, in came the big man – Yusuf Pathan. He promptly launched the left arm spin of Ankit Sharma into the stands. And then lost his middle stump as he tried repeating the dose next ball. Kallis and Tiwary while not running away with the game at any time, seemed well in control. However, they still had a couple of overs from Steyn to negotiate. The best fast bowler in world cricket returned to send Kallis back to pavilion after managing to get a nick off him.

Tiwary too seemed to lose his temperament and because of it, almost his wicket too. Getting involved in a war of words with Steyn he left his crease and wandered to the middle of the pitch arguing, even when the ball was in play. He was lucky to have survived as the ever alert Sangakkara barely missed out on a direct hit. Thereafter the Bengal Ranji trophy captain got his bearings right and guided the chase with a score of 30 not out.