This match promised to be an explosive, close match. It started that way, as Hayden and Patel started off decently, only for Lee to snare Patel behind the stumps. The Kings in silver fielded decently, but Yuvraj was a little off-colour. Their superior bowling ran into something on a mission of destruction- Mike Hussey. He smashed everything around, even the good balls, the in-form bowlers, hitting nine sixes and scoring a hundred at over two runs a ball. The only bowler to have a good match was Irfan Pathan, but his figures were disfigured savagely by Hussey. Even the sedate Badrinath smashed two sixes in the final overs. Piyush Chawla had a bad match, but that was absolutely no reason to call on a part-timer, smashed over the ropes and into the fence for 24 runs in an over.
Flat pitch. Hard outfield. Dreadful fielding. Weak bowling. Could have been easy for the Silver Kings, but they had to chase a Superking Super Score of 240. Now that's next-to-impossible! Not if you're James Hopes or Kumar Sangakkara. Both got good scores at great strike rates, but Hopes didn't last long enough and Sanga didn't strike hard enough. Yuvraj looked in good nick, but he too didn't last. Opening Karan Goel had a good start, but didn't last too long. Strangely, we saw Simon Katich bat ahead of Irfan Pathan and that reduced the striking power so much, that with over a hundred needed in less than 50 deliveries, the target looked monstrously tougher with every ball.
Finally, wickets in hand were just not enough to compensate for lack of strike power and this was a match where a scoring rate of 10 an over was actually inadequate. And of course, the much-ridiculed Joginder Sharma had another good game.
