West Indies shock Aussies at World T20; Yuvraj blasts Banglas

West Indies blasted their way past an apparently shell-shocked Australia to produce the second upset of the ICC World Twenty20.

Having restricted the Aussies – who won the toss – to 169/7, the Windies, fired by skipper Chris Gayle on top form, chased down the runs within 16 overs. Brett Lee’s first three overs went for 51, as Gayle (88 off 50) and Andre Fletcher (53 off 32) put on 133 for the first wicket – a record for international T20s.

Gayle’s innings included six sixes, one of them possibly the largest ever seen at the ground. He left the park to a standing ovation when he was finally out with the Windies just 12 runs short of victory.

Australia were on the back foot from the off, thanks to an extraordinary first over from Jerome Taylor.

The nine-ball over included three wides, two wickets and no runs off the bat: first, Shane Watson was caught at mid-off by Sarwan trying to hit over the top; then Ricky Ponting – having faced two consecutive wides – was trapped lbw by the first legitimate ball he faced.

When vice-skip Pup Clarke went, the Aussies were 15/3 – but then David Warner (63 off 53) led a fightback that brought them to apparent repectability.

But they were blown away by Gayle and Fletcher’s onslaught, with Ponting using seven different bowlers in the 15.5 over innings.

“We spoke about getting the first over of each innings right and as it turned out we lost two wickets in our first batting innings and they took a lot off our first bowling over as well,” said Aussie skip Ricky Ponting afterwards.

“With the game being as short as it is, you can’t afford to give momentum like that away in either innings and we did it in both.

“I thought 169 was going to be a competitive total if we could take wickets up front with the new ball but they took us on, hit some early boundaries and got the momentum going their way. They outplayed us for sure.

Australia must now beat Sri Lanka on Monday to have a chance of staying in the competition.

• At Trent Bridge, India beat Bangladesh by 25 runs. Having won the toss and batted, they looked in danger of being bogged down as Gautam Gambhir took 46 balls over his half-century. But a majestic display of big-hitting from man of the match Yuvraj Singh (41 off 18 balls) changed the momentum of the game.

India finished with 180/5 off their 20 overs. Banglas opener Junaid Siddique hit 41 off 22 including three sixes to give Indian fans something to worry about: but when Siddique fell to Ojha in the ninth over, Bangladesh were 77/4. They lacked the firepower down the order to pursue the chase and the game fizzled out as a contest, with Ojha finishing with 4/21 off his four overs.

In the first game of the day, New Zealand (90/3) beat Scotland (89/4) in a seven-over shoot-out with an over to spare. With the Black Caps still needing 22 runs off the last two overs, another upset, after England’s debacle on Friday night, had seemed on the cards. But Scott Styris and Ross Taylor blasted the penultimate over from Jan Stander for 22 to finish the rain-delayed game in no-nonsense fashion.

The Hit Parade: the 2007 ICC World Twenty20 day by day

| Day 1 |

What’s a par score in international Twenty20? 170? 180? What about 200-plus? The West Indies race out of the traps to hit 205/6 against South Africa at the Wanderers, with Chris Gayle playing the innings of the tournament inside the first hour: 117 runs off 57 balls, including 88 runs in boundaries. By half-time the Windies are installed as second favourites to win the whole thing. By full-time, that’s out the window as slack bowling and slack fielding return to haunt them and the Saffers revisit their 438-v-434 Jo’burg heroics: they chase the target down with 14 balls to spare. Pundits don their tin hats and prepare for a big-scoring tournament – although, in fact, only one more game (India v England) would produce more runs, and no-one else would hit a century over the whole fortnight.

| Day 2 |

A sensation in Cape Town as Zimbabwe, who have not beaten a major side in an ODI for nearly four years, turn over Australia. After some – according to Punter Ponting – “diabolical” batting at the top, the world champs recover from 19/3 to make a paltry 138/9. Zims’ keep-bat Brendan Taylor (60 off 45) then shows them how its done, holding his nerve to ‘hit’ the winning leg byes with a ball to spare. “Of course I’m embarrassed,” declares Punter, talking even faster than normal. “Wehavebeenoutplayed. It is a mental thing for us. We have to start respecting the game.”

| Day 3 |

First, Zimbabwe beat Australia; now England – thanks to 79 off 37 from KP and some mid-order strangling from Mascarenhas and Schofield with the ball – beat Zimbabwe. KP puts two and two together and gets… ahead of himself: “We have a great chance to send Australia home early,” he says. “They humiliated us throughout last winter and it would be nice to give them a bit of humiliation in return.”

India-Scotland is abandoned without a ball being bowled – which, weirdly, puts India on the brink of going home if they lose too heavily to Pakistan.

West Indies are already going home – they lose by six wickets to Bangladesh, thanks chiefly to Mo Ashraful’s 61 off 27 balls.

| Day 4 |

England-Australia! In the most exciting format of the game yet invented! Should have been a thriller… but it’s as flat as yesterday’s beer, as England look at best cowed and at worst second rate. Humiliation is on the menu, as KP predicted, but it’s Australia who win with more than five overs to spare. There are 17 dot balls in the first six overs of England’s innings, as the right-armer Clark and the left-armer Johnson find the exact unplayable spot (generally very wide outside off stump) and keep plugging at it.

After England limp along painfully to 135, the pitch is apparently changed for the Aussie innings: Hayden and Gilchrist play as if on a carefree drive in the country. James Kirtley’s first over in international cricket for three years begins with three fours from Hayden. Kirtley is taken off at once and not seen for the rest of the tournament. Freddie Flintoff, the pick of the bowlers, spends the second half wincing. As do England supporters around the world.

In Durban, India and Pakistan play out international T20’s first-ever tie. With top-scorer Misbah-ul-Haq at the crease, Pakistan need just a single to win off the last two balls – but Misbah is run out off the last ball, plunging the sides into 1) a crazily extended 15-minute interlude with everyone running about, practising bowling, giving interviews and so forth and 2) an exciting (but irrelevent) bowl out. India, nominating part-time bowlers Sehwag and Uthappa in their first three, hit the stumps three times out of three. Pakistan manage… nought. Indian skipper MS Dhoni reveals he chose his bowlers based on who’d done well in practice; Pakistan skip Shoaib Malik reveals he didn’t even know there was going to be a shoot-out.

Earlier in the day, Sri Lanka hammer a world-record 260/6 (Jayasuriya 88 from 44, Jayawardene 65 from 27, Mubarak 45 from 13) to trounce Kenya by 172 runs – the equivalent of a 430-run win in a 50-over game.

| Day 5 |

Sri Lanka and South Africa win dead group-stages rubbers. On the eve of England’s game against the hosts, Paul Collingwood has a late-night trip to an ‘inappropriate’ bar that will end up with him saying sorry and being fined £1000. No one knows about the inappropriate trip at this stage. Not even, for five or ten minutes, Colly himself who takes a while to work out that he’s drinking in South Africa’s premier ‘upmarket’ lapdance bar, with 100 ‘beautiful’ ‘dancers’ in the ‘area’. He had it down as a JD Wetherspoons! And this guy’s the captain!

| Day 6 |

The Super Eights kick off. Australia, into their stride after their brushes with minnows Zimbabwe and England, give Bangladesh a thumping. Brett Lee takes the first T20 hat-trick; the batters knock off the runs with six overs to spare.

In Cape Town, England miss seven catches as they contrive to blow a winning position against South Africa. Colly is involved in the key mix-up, with Owais Shah, in the field: the Saffers are 113/6 with just 17 balls left, when the pair miss Albie Morkel off Schofield. Morkel turns into a superman, makes 43 off 20, Saffers post 154 and England never get near. KP is freakishly run-out, after colliding with bowler Shaun Pollock; Colly gets a first-ball duck and ends a glum day by sending in Jeremy Snape – five years out of ODIs and three weeks since his last county innings – ahead of in-form whacker Dimi Mascarenhas. Snape gets 7 from 400 balls (okay, 11) as England go down by 19 runs.

| Day 7 |

Pakistan shape up for being the dark horses by beating pre-tournament second-favourites Sri Lanka in Jo’burg. Coach Moores breaks Matt Prior’s thumb in training, leaving England without a specialist keeper for tomorrow’s possibly crunch game with New Zealand.

| Day 8 |

England throw it away against New Zealand, much as they did against South Africa. Except even more so. Vikram Solanki takes the gauntlets and does… alright. England have the Black Caps in the cart twice: 1) when they reduce them to 91/5 before letting them off the hook 2) when Solanki and Maddy put on 62 in eight overs for the first wicket. But England STILL lose their way, chasing 165 to win: KP gets bowled by Vettori attempting a crazy reverse sweep. There are three hapless run outs. It’s not a professional showing. Colly is fined £1000 for his visit to the lapdance club.

| Day 9 |

England’s supermodel-thin hopes of qualification for the semis end when Justin Kemp (89 from 56) manhandles South Africa to victory over New Zealand. That means England are left playing for pride against India. Which soon disappears over extra-cover, backward point, square-leg, midwicket (twice) and mid-on as Yuvraj Singh biffs his way into history by hitting six sixes off Stuart Broad. Actually, the ball flies off his bat with a series of effortless flicks as Broad tries everything to halt the raining maximums bar varying his pace, line, length and little-boy-lost facial expression.

Yuvraj, his 50 coming off an insane 12 balls, is the difference between the teams. While England prepare to fly on to Sri Lanka, Andrew Flintoff, who has played through the pain throughout the tournament, will, it is announced, fly home. Ricky Ponting is also ruled out of the rest of the tournament after twanging his hammy.

| Day 10 |

It’s come down to an effective quarter-final at Newlands between the 50-over World Cup finalists. But, once again, Australia simply blow Sri Lanka away, dismissing them for 101 and then knocking off the runs in 62 balls without losing a wicket.

“Everything happens so quickly, I don’t think there’s time to choke,” said Shaun Pollock before the tournament. Wrong! The Saffers, so far unbeaten, tumble out of the tournament in humiliating fashion: skittled for 116 (including a solitary six) by India, they lose by 37 runs. “There’s a lot of disappointment knowing you’ve lost one game in the tournament and you’re out,” says Graeme Smith, showing a masterful understanding of how cups work.

| Day 11 |

Rest day. And, according to MS Dhoni, the players really need it. “It is just a three-hour match,” quoth the stumper. “But the intensity and involvement is more than a 50-over match or even a Test match.” Australia’s always-injured Shane Watson must surely agree. He lives up to his ‘New Flintoff tag’ as he returns home with a hamstring injury, leaving the Aussies with just 13 fit players.

| Day 12 |

Pakistan and India win through to a dream final after two breathless semis. In Cape Town, New Zealand go to pieces against Pakistan. A seething Daniel Vettori describes his side’s batting as “pretty inept” as they make 143/8. Ross Taylor manages to run out two team-mates in farcical circumstances and to spill a chance in the deep off Pakistan danger-man Imran Nazir. Nazir hits five sixes in a 59 that sets up the successful run chase.

In a noisy Kingsmead stadium full of their own supporters, India unseat Australia in a terrific topsy-turvy game. Another imperious innings from Yuvraj Singh (70 off 30 this time) leads India to a mighty 188/5, before a pumped-up Sree Sreesanth despatches Gilchrist and Hayden with a) perfect yorkers and b) a load of shouting, gesturing and punching the ground. Australia’s hearts-in-mouths chase twists both ways. With 54 needed off five and Hussey and Symonds at the crease, it looks their game. But Harbhajan Singh puts the clamps on and the Aussies wind up needing an impossible 22 off the last over.

| Day 13 |

Another rest day. It’s been an amazing tournament, almost perfectly run, but the Powers That Be will insist on a fly in the ointment. Holding the final on a Monday not a Sunday. What’s that about?

| Day 14 |

India snatch the trophy in the last over of a final worthy of a great tournament. In front of 32,000 in Jo’burg, two breathless weeks of cricket comes down to one ill-judged shot. With six needed off four balls, Misbah-ul-Haq (him again) opts to try an insane paddle over his shoulder off Joginder Sharma. He’s caught at short fine leg and the game is up for Pakistan. “No-one expected us to win,” says skipper Dhoni afterwards. “But the way we played today we deserve a big celebration.”

20 reasons to remember the 2009 IPL

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1 Bruno the police dog that held up play at the opening match at Newlands. Sachin Tendulkar was early in the process of grafting out a scratchy 59 when Bruno invaded the pitch. As many as 20 people attempted to catch the hound during an 11-minute break in play before he finally trotted off on his own terms.

2 The St George’s Park crowd. Surprisingly, it was the Port Elizabeth faithful who most embraced the IPL. Packed to the rafters for even most midweek games, St George’s Park went off the hook at every match. Led by the famous brass band in the cheap seats, it is possibly the only ground in the world where the crowd sing their way through every over.

3 The Super Over between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Rajasthan Royals, after the tournament’s only tie, was awesome. Shane Warne gave the ball to his youngest bowler, Kamran Khan, and Chris Gayle smashed him for 15 runs off the over. In reply, Yusuf Pathan blasted 18 runs off four balls to give the Royals their first win.

4 The look on Kevin Pietersen’s face after umpire Simon Taufel gave him out LBW for a duck to Muralitharan. KP was fined for dissent after his reaction to this, correct, decision from the world’s best umpire.

5 AB de Villiers’ 100 off 51 balls for Delhi v Chennai in Durban, the first ton of the tournament. De Villiers ended up the third highest runscorer, averaging 51.66.

6 The anonymous (and probably fake) blogger, claiming to be one of the floundering Kolkata Knight Riders, who created havoc with his insults of the likes of ‘Lordie’ (Saurav Ganguly) and ‘Dildo’ (team owner Shah Rukh Khan).  

7 Suresh Raina’s century that never was. The scoreboard showed 100 runs next to Raina’s name when his team, the Rajasthan Royals, took on the Chennai Super Kings at Centurion. Raina celebrated the ‘hundred’ then went for a big shot off the next ball and was caught on the boundary. By the time Raina got back to the dug-out, the scoreboard had been edited to show 98 runs, as the scorers realised they had made a mistake.

8 Warne’s on-field beer drinking. Not long after having a cigarette in the nets in Durban, Shane Warne was offered and accepted a large swig of beer on the boundary during a match against the Royal Challengers at Centurion. It didn’t seem to hinder his bowling or captaincy as the Royals restricted the opposition to 105 all out then chased it down with five overs to spare.

9 Dirk Nannes keeping Glenn McGrath out of the Delhi side. With a maximum number of four foreign players allowed in each team, Virender Sehwag couldn’t find a space for McGrath in his side. Instead, McGrath wound up coaching the Dutch/Middlesex bowler, still a relative newcomer to cricket after his previous career as a World Cup skier.

10 Matthew Hayden’s non-stop run-feast. Forced out of the Australian team earlier this year, the Big Fish was back to his old bowler-bullying self at IPL 2009. Hayden held the Orange Cap, which is awarded to the leading run scorer, for almost the entire IPL season. He finished with 572 runs, thereby keeping the cap despite playing only 12 out of a possible 16 matches.

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11 Yuvraj Singh’s hat-trick in Durban. Claiming the wickets of Test batsmen, Robin Uthappa, Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher, the part time spinner took a hat-trick on the same ground where he hit Stuart Broad for six sixes in one over in 2007. Yuvraj then smacked 50 off 34 balls, but still ended on the losing side against Bangalore.

 

12 Rohit Sharma’s hat-trick at Centurion. Sharma, the Indian all-rounder and under-23 player of the tournament took a scintillating hat-trick that helped put an end to the campaign of Sachin Tendulkar’s Mumbai Indians.

13 Yuvraj Singh’s second hat-trick in two weeks. This time his efforts were enough to give an unlikely win to his Kings XI Punjab team. Punjab had posted only 134/7 but, thanks to captain Yuvraj, the team were able to defend it as the Deccan Chargers fell short by a single run.

14 Munaf Patel’s sensational over.  Munaf Patel took one wicket for one run in the final over for Rajasthan Royals to beat Mumbai Indians by two runs in Durban. Mumbai needed just four runs off the last over with four wickets in hand when Patel bowled an extraordinarily tight over that included two run outs. Pandemonium ensued. 

15 Charl Langeveldt proved he should have played in every game when he took three wickets for 15 runs in Durban. Kolkata Knight Riders coach, John Buchanan, preferred Ajit Agarkar and even Mashrafe Mortaza to South Africa’s best death bowler. Buchanan’s team lost almost every game while Langeveldt sat on the bench. When the South African was finally given a chance in the last match, v Rajasthan, he took a wicket with the first ball of a beautiful spell. 

16 Manish Pandey’s century. The unknown Pandey was an integral part of India’s success at the 2008 Under-19 World Cup. Three days before the final, Pandey hit an unbeaten 114 runs off 73 balls against the Deccan Chargers at Centurion. Pandey’s 48 off 35, at the Wanderers semi final versus the Chennai two days later, was every bit as good. Watch out for this guy

17 Winning captain Adam Gilchrist’s destruction of every opening bowler in the tournament. Gilly hadn’t really played any cricket since the last IPL but that didn’t stop him from cracking 174 runs in sixes and 216 runs in fours. Gilchrist came second on the Orange Cap table and was a major part of every one of his team’s wins, with the exception of the final, where he was clean bowled by Kumble for a duck in the first over. No-one who saw it will forget Gilchrist’s 85 off 35 balls in the Centurion semi-final against Delhi.

18 Anil Kumble’s excellent bowling and captaincy. Spare a thought for the losing captain who bowled like a master and did everything except win the IPL. Kumble took five wickets for five runs in the first game of the tournament to crush Rajasthan, the defending champions. And Kumble’s four wickets for 16 runs in the final was almost enough to win it.  

19 The fireworks. Lalit Modi went to town on his explosives expenditure. I have never seen such awesome fireworks in my life as I saw every day over the last six weeks. Domestic pets near the stadiums can now re-emerge from under the table.

20 Eddy Grant’s “Gimme Hope Joanna”. The IPL organisers could not have found a better headline act to perform at the closing ceremony concert than the reggae legend, Eddy Grant. The entire capacity crowd stayed behind and sang along loudly along to the words of the ant-apartheid hit as they waved neon fluorescent sticks and hundreds of lanterns sailed off into the cold Jo’burg night’s sky.

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Yuvraj Singh, new balls and waking up Daniel Vettori: my latest week at the IPL

Last Thursday at Supersport Park, Centurion, something most unusual happened. Yuvraj Singh hit the biggest six of the tournament and in doing so, lost the match for his team. In a rain reduced match against the Chennai Super Kings, the Punjab Kings XI were chasing 185 runs in 18 overs, a daunting 10.3 runs per over. After a couple of wickets and a slow start, the asking rate shot up to 13 runs per over.

And then the fireworks began. Simon Katich hit three consecutive sixes before holing out on the boundary. Yuvraj Singh was joined by Mahela Jayawardene at the crease and their partnership quickly mushroomed as they continued to keep up with the intimidating asking rate. But when Yuvraj hit the monster of all sixes, measuring 119 metres, he lost the slippery wet ball that was coming so readily onto the bat and over the boundary.

The replacement dry ball allowed Chennai captain, MS Dhoni, to put spinners Muralitharan and Suresh Raina on for a few economical overs, thereby winning the game. As in any other form of cricket, the prevailing conditions are never in one’s control.

As Shilpa Shetty, the Bollywood megastar and co-owner of the Rajasthan Royals outfit said in Cape Town at the start of the IPL, “It is the unpredictability of cricket that makes it the best game there is.”

East London, nicknamed “slummies” for obvious reasons, is a coastal city in the Eastern Cape. I went to boarding school 100 miles away in the far smaller town of Grahamstown. Bunking out to the big lights of East London ten years ago offered such great excitement and I hadn’t been back to “slummies” since those exciting weekends away from school, where I remember seeing such fantastic things as indoor laser games for the first time.

And so I decided to visit East London last Friday for an IPL cricket match. On arrival I couldn’t help realise what a small and sleepy town it really is. Not much happens in EL and when it does, it happens slowly. The Xhosas, who make up most of the Eastern Cape population, are a very laid-back people and schedules run on the quintessential African time.

There are no taxis at the airport and the airport to hotel shuttle minibus stopped seven times during an hour and a half journey before dropping me at my hotel, just 15 miles from the airport. To their credit, Neil Mckenzie and Ramiz Raja, didn’t complain once as our driver stopped to run errands and wave at his girlfriends. One of five Wisden cricketers of the year in 2008, Mckenzie, helped a wheel-chaired lady in and out of the minibus and then carried her grandson’s bag to the foyer of their hotel. Mckenzie, who is commentating on the IPL, hadn’t been recognised by the couple, he’s just a great guy.

I had a few hours to kill before watching the Delhi Daredevils thrash the Mumbai Indians so I enjoyed a delicious fillet steak and a pint of castle draught at the Blue Lagoon hotel deck. I shared the deck with a pair of dassies (rock rabbits), who moved slower than the Xhosas as they soaked up the sun. I was contemplating the fact that this obscure animal’s closest living relative is the elephant when a charming Xhosa brought me my bill.

The total damage was R49, roughly a third of the price of the equivalent meal in a Johannesburg or Cape Town hotel. No wonder Lalit Modi and the BCCI chose cities like East London over the original London town when the Indian government decided it would be unable to provide the appropriate levels of security for the tournament.

The cricket ground, Buffalo Park, is only 150 yards from the sea, without a stand in between, and boasts the largest grass bank I have ever seen. Stretching hundreds of yards up a hill at an awkward angle, the bank affords spectators an awful long range view from which to watch the cricket as the offshore wind blows their picnics away. I guess the locals don’t know any better.

Not that many aeroplanes come and go from East London and when I boarded my plane the following morning I found that my aisle seat was next to Mr Daniel Vettori’s. His wife and two month old son, James, were by the window. He recognised me from my asking lots of questions at press conferences and he congenially said hello but he clearly wasn’t after a good old chinwag.

I guess the New Zealand captain and highly economical spin bowler, who is ranked number four in the world ODI bowler’s rankings, didn’t want me to ask him why he played in only the first few matches this season. He has sat out of the next seven matches.

When I looked up the Reliance Rankings, as they are now named, I saw another Kiwi’s name at number two. Kyle Mills is apparently fit as a fiddle and desperate to play for the Mumbai Indians but he is yet to be given a game.

The amount of money wasted on cricket player’s salaries for this tournament would be enough to put a dent inn the battle against world hunger. Consider the fact that Mashrafe Mortaza from Bangladesh receives a salary of 600 000 US dollars per season from the Kolkata Knight Riders and has never even played a match for them.

So I was sitting next to Vettori when I thought I would stretch across his sleeping body and lift up the blanket covering his son’s face to get a good look at the little tiger, only to find the baby breastfeeding. Vettori senior awoke at this delicate point in procedings and I quickly looked the other way.

However East London is a bustling metropolis when compared to Kimberley. The stark beauty of the North Eastern Cape landscape surrounds the airstrip where my 40-seater twin-propeller South African Airways plane landed on Monday. My father calls it mamfa – miles and miles of fuck all!.

The old diamond town was a British stronghold where rogues like Barney Barnato and Cecil John Rhodes found their fortune was famously besieged by the Boers for 124 days over the turn of the 20th Century, during the Boer War. The town is famous for the big hole; a seriously deep crater dug by hand that yielded 15 million carats of diamonds.

I arrived at the De Beers Oval nice and early for the match and mine was the fourth car in the queue to enter the media car park. Amazingly it took forty minutes – the same amount of time Bangalore yesterday took to score 110 runs – to enter the car park. Each car and bag inside it was thoroughly searched and then searched again before it could progress up a ramp so that my car’s underside could be checked for explosives. Fifteen policemen handled the operation and I missed the toss.

The Deccan Chargers posted a formidable 166 runs with newcomer Andrew Symonds making runs for the second time in as many matches at that ground. But it was the Calypso batting of West Indian Dwayne Smith that earned the player of the match (what was wrong with saying man of the match?) award.

The Rajasthan Royals put up a poor fight as they were bowled out for 113 runs. But their biggest potential loss of the evening was that their captain, Shane Warne, pulled a hamstring and may spend the final ten days of the tournament on the sidelines. Warne would prefer to be in the thick of the action but it would allow him more time to play poker and womanise.

The first impressive performance this season by a New Zealander took place last night as the under pressure Kolkata captain, Brendon McCullum, smashed 84 runs from 64 balls to help his side post 173 at Centurion. It looked a winning total but could the side that has won one match from eleven defend it on a pitch that offered assistance to both swing and spin bowlers?

Of course they could not. John Buchanan, who coached Australia in their glory years, is an awful T20 coach and McCullum is a pathetic T20 captain. The relatively unknown Sri Lankan, Angelo Matthews was preferred to Charl Langeveldt, probably the best death bowler in South Africa and Mccullum’s bowling changes were inexplicable.

Mystery spinner, Ajentha Mendis was given the second over when the ball was swinging like a banana. David Hussey was given only one over and that over was during the powerplay. Ganguly, the most economical bowler of last year’s tournament and a bowler that is most effective when the ball is swinging wasn’t given even one over.

Bangalore required 14 runs an over with four overs to go when another Kiwi, Ross Taylor launched his assault on Ishant Sharma, aged Ajit Agarkar and inexperienced Angelo Matthews. Taylor’s 81 came from 33 balls – an astonishing strike rate of 245.45 runs per 100 balls – as he struck seven fours and five sixes and outdid his fellow Kiwi, McCullum, winning the match with four balls to spare.

The Kolkata Knight Riders are the only team of eight that cannot qualify for the semi-finals. Delhi looks safe at the top of the table and Chennai and Deccan look relatively safe just behind. So it looks most likely that Mumbai, Bangalore, Rajasthan and Punjab fight it out for that highly coveted fourth spot. But, of course, it’s not yet as clear cut as that!