Bangalore smash flat Deccan in IPL play-off
A business-like Royal Challengers Bangalore have won the IPL’s third place play-off against the Deccan Chargers, with tight bowling setting up a straightforward nine-wicket victory for RCB against last year’s IPL champions.
Someone forgot to check whether the batteries were charged before Deccan took to the field for the match, with Adam Gilchrist’s team delivering a batting performance that at best can be described as flat in the face of a potent bowling attack.
With a place in the Champions League on offer for the winner of the play-off, Deccan chose this match to record the lowest innings total of any team during the 2010 IPL series, a woeful 82, all out in 18.3 overs. It was an almost indefensible total on a Mumbai pitch on which Bangalore skipper Anil Kumble had stated pre-match that he would be happy to restrict the opposition to a score around the 140 to 150 mark.
Credit must go to Bangalore for their bowling performance, and chiefly to Kumble who began the match by dismissing his Deccan counterpart for four, as Gilchrist was caught in the deep after attempting to extract the maximum value from a Kumble full toss.
It was an ordinary end to what has been an ordinary season with the bat for the former Australia wicketkeeper, and with relatively few exemptions that epitomised the batting performance of the entire team.
While No. 3 batsman Anirudh Singh toiled for his 40 runs from 39 deliveries, almost half of his team’s total, and another of the locals, Venugopal Rao, contributed 24 runs further down the order there were precious few positives elsewhere, with no other Deccan batsman reaching double figures and four of them dismissed without troubling the scorer.
Kumble finished with Bangalore’s best bowling figures of the match, taking 4-16 as Deccan struggled on a pitch that offered some assistance for the spinners.
Chasing a pedestrian 83-run total, Bangalore’s batsmen took a slow and steady approach for the majority of their innings, losing only opener Jacques Kallis for 19 from 32 balls, strolling to their slowest half-century of the season before Kevin Pietersen and Rahul Dravid picked up the pace somewhat to seal the victory with 37 balls to spare.
The win sees Bangalore finish the season on a high and move through to the Champions League later this year, while Deccan are left to rue a disappointing finals campaign.
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