Chennai bowl into IPL final against Mumbai
Four wickets to Chennai Super Kings paceman Doug Bollinger have helped the team book a date with the Mumbai Indians in the final of the IPL in 2010.
The Australian quick teamed with R Ashwin to stifle the Deccan Chargers run-chase from the outset in the second semi-final of this year’s competition. The pair restricted Deccan captain Adam Gilchrist and opening partner Herschelle Gibbs to just 19 runs from the first five overs, which included a maiden from Bollinger in the second over, and from there reaching the 143-run target was always going to be a challenge for the Chargers.
Few though would have predicted the emphatic nature of Chennai’s 38-run victory before the match, with Deccan all out for 104 with four balls to spare and their hopes of repeating last year’s competition victory dashed.
The pressure to get the scoreboard ticking over took its toll on the Deccan skipper in the sixth over when attempting to break Chennai’s stranglehold he was caught at midwicket off the bowling of Bollinger for 15 in yet another disappointing innings this season. The paceman followed Gilchrist’s wicket with Tirumalasetti Suman’s scalp in the same over, and can thank Suresh Raina’s fine catching at cover for that one.
With Deccan in need of steady heads, Rohit Sharma instead looped a shorter ball to the waiting Muttiah Muralitharan at long on to be left reeling at 3-31 in the eighth over. A steady flow of wickets, and just a trickle of runs for the remainder of the innings, ensured Chennai booked their place in the final.
Bollinger finished his four overs with the impressive figures of 4-13, the Australian proving a revelation in the IPL as well as for his country on the international scene over the southern hemisphere summer.
MS Dhoni’s team had themselves made a slow start to their innings and it was only through missed opportunities by Deccan in the field that their innings wasn’t in much worse shape in the early stages of the match.
Three dropped catches, all straightforward chances, in the field by Deccan and a stuttering start from Chennai’s batsman meant that the early overs of the second semi-final of the 2010 IPL were a largely spectacle of untidy cricket.
Matthew Hayden (eight) and Suresh Raina (two) didn’t make Deccan pay for their lost opportunities and the Chargers were in the driver’s seat after Chennai had slumped to 3-29.
Dhoni though helped to guide Chennai to 81, before he edged an attempted cut to Singh at slip, and the 24-year-old made no mistake with the catch, dismissing Dhoni for 30.
That sent Albie Morkel into the middle, and Gilchrist responded by bringing spinner Pragyan Ojha back into the attack. It proved an expensive decision, with 10 runs conceded from the first four balls of this over, but when Morkel sought to hit him out of the ground on the fifth, Symonds was waiting in the deep to snaffle the catch and leave Chennai at 5-95 with just over five overs to bat, and a long way from a respectable total.
Those last few overs though had been where Deccan’s bowlers had been notoriously loose during this IPL season and today they conceded what proved to be a 46 valuable runs in their last five overs, with Subramaniam Badrinath (37 from 41 balls) and Srikkanth Anirudha (24 from 15 balls) helping Chennai to what ultimately proved to be an unassailable 142-7.
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