IPL: Marsh’s Fifty Helps Punjab Beat Mumbai

Kings XI guided by the most successful batsman in IPL history – Shaun Marsh, scored a fine win against the Mumbai Indians. They always looked like the hungrier team right from the start and fielded exceptionally well. This was their sixth victory against the team from Mumbai out of the nine times they have faced each other. The start of the match was all about Sachin Tendulkar, and his return back from the injury, and the fact that Gilchrist was out of the side with hamstring trouble. Mumbai made an interesting team selection by having just three overseas players in their side.

Harbhajan Singh won the toss and took first bat. Franklin who struggled against Praveen Kumar’s swing the first over, batted out a maiden. And after a quiet few initial overs, the openers started taking more risks. Franklin shrugged off the early issues, and got peppering the midwicket boundary regularly. Sachin got run out for 23 while attempting an ill judged second run. Rohit Sharma joined him in the pavilion soon enough. Dinesh Kartik got promoted up the order, and did justice to that decision as he got going right away. The partnership between Franklin and him was growing exponentially, as in between they scored 64 runs in a four over spurt. However, Karthik got run out after the time-out. That was exactly the break Kings XI were looking for, and they tightened the screws thereafter. Parvinder Awana bowled with good hostility and was ably supported by Piyush Chawla. Franklin tried gamely to score 79 runs off 51 balls, but the MI innings did not get the final kick it wanted and they ended up with 163 runs.

The team from Punjab started with tour domestic batsman - Saini and Mandeep Singh as their openers. And the two of them got the team off to a flier, albeit with a fair bit of luck as their mishits kept landing between fielders. Through Pollard and Ojha, MI kept it tight in the middle overs and managed to sneak four wickets. However, Shaun Marsh kept producing the big hits whenever his team needed it. With twenty needed off the last two overs, Marsh hit both Munaf and Pererra for sixes to win Kings XI the match with three balls to spare. The out of favour Australian No.3 scored an invaluable 61 off 38 balls.