IPL Pulse: Slow chasing and fast ageing
Good morning,
If you are still stuck at Silk Board after last night's after-party, it might be time to turn around and head back to work. And before your mailbox swallows you and Slack tunes hit all the wrong notes, here's Cricbuzz Pulse, your 2-minute scan of the IPL universe.
Last night in five lines
Oh, this happened
Tim David's leg stump went for a walk, thanks to a perfect yorker from Anshul Kamboj. He was 28 off 14. Except, it was a no-ball. What followed later from David is difficult to put into words (even though Cricbuzz did it on ball-by-ball comms). Five sixes flew off David's bat thereafter, and a couple of fours too, as RCB reached 250. Btw, there was also a 106-meter six that landed on the roof!
Pulse Awards
The well-that-aged-fast award goes not to Shami but to SRH for letting him go.
The wait-that-wasn't-in-script award goes to Shami for rolling out cutters with the new ball and leaving SRH's openers totally confused.
The copy-paste-that award goes to Devdutt Padikkal for bringing his domestic form straight into the IPL.
The it's-lonely-at-the-top award goes to Khaleel Ahmed for being the only CSK bowler to keep his economy rate in single digits.
The why-would-you-do-this award goes to Rishabh Pant for taking the chase deep and dragging everyone along.
The we-talked-about-this award goes to Nitish Reddy for taking the new-ball again and leaking runs, despite the old-ball success just the other day.
The where-was-this-earlier award goes to the Hyderabad pitch for finally offering something to the bowlers.
Talking point
Mohammed Shami's return to Hyderabad. It's a venue that let go of him and where he conceded his most expensive T20 figures. Bowling to SRH was always going to be a blockbuster, and the veteran pacer delivered by removing Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma with cutters, which he rarely bowls upfront using the new ball. That early damage left SRH at 22/3, a long way from their usual Powerplay launches on home surfaces and proved to be the difference between the sides.
The chatter
Shami was cheeky to remind how "last year I was here" and how "a lot of slower balls were bowled", so there was nothing surprising about his cutters in the Powerplay. In Bengaluru, RCB might have won but it's not been all rosy for Tim David. "I've been getting in trouble training with the boys," he said. "We have competitions to try and hit them on the roof and we're obviously on the side pitches. So to get one during a match out of the middle is pretty pleasing."
Bhuvneshwar confessed that after watching Tim David bat, he "wasn't sure that we should be happy or we should be worried because we had to bowl next."
Stat Snack
14 different batters hit at least one six in the RCB-CSK match, a new record in the IPL!
What's the latest gossip?
Birdies say the whole "sarpanch" tag may have started with Ricky Ponting in the nets constantly going "sir, punch" to the youngsters. But with the captain so much in the coach's image, the lines blurred and people got confused about who was saying it.
Tonight's watchlist
It's pitch-watch (how's it gonna play?), Rahane-watch (what's he gonna speak this time?) and weather-watch (will it rain?) in Kolkata as KKR host a red-hot Punjab Kings. There's history here. It was a loss to PBKS that derailed KKR's campaign last year, when the lowest defended total in IPL took a fresh hit. Expect a bit of memory and maybe a bit of payback, who knows.
Reckless prediction for tonight's match
The weather is also going to conspire against KKR spinners and it's going to be another green top at the Eden Gardens.
