Deccan to charge past Chennai in IPL semis
Last year’s IPL winners, the Deccan Chargers, left their run to the semi-finals late but after putting the afterburners on and winning their last five league matches locked in second place on the points table.
It’s a run of form that can’t be ignored, and bearing in mind this is the team that in 2009 turned a fourth-place finish into victory in the final, the signs are good that Adam Gilchrist’s team will be playing off for the championship again this year.
First though, they’ll need to overcome the inconsistent Chennai Super Kings in their semi-final match in Mumbai.
Deccan’s results against Chennai in the league this season, where they won both times they played CSK, can only inspire the defending champions heading into the match. The first was a 31-run victory away from home in the fifth match of the season, a win which provided their first victory of the 2010 series.
It was a match in where left-arm spinner Pragyan Ojha gave us a glimpse of his mettle, and of what was to come in the remainder of the season, holding his nerve after being smashed for six by Chennai’s Justin Kemp to send the batsman back to the pavilion two balls later.
After Deccan had completed their 14 league matches, the 23-year-old had bagged 20 wickets, including best figures of 3-26 to finish as the leading wicket-taker in the IPL. It was three more scalps than any other bowler in the competition, and seven more than the more famous name, Muttiah Muralitharan who Chennai turn to as their leading spinner.
The second time Deccan and Chennai faced off this series was in the year’s 42nd IPL match, in which the Charger’s took a six-wicket victory with five balls to spare.
For Chennai, Suresh Raina stood tall in their batting line-up, making his 52 from 42 balls, but gained precious little support from anyone batting below him on CSK’s card. But T Suman’s 55-runs helped to set up another Deccan victory and Andrew Symonds’ experience in clinching the required runs at the death also proved crucial.
For his part, Gilchrist scored his second highest score of this IPL season (38 from 17 balls) against Chennai the first time Deccan played MS Dhoni’s team in 2010, but while the skipper has made his share of quick-fire starts this year, he’s only passed the half-century once. The former Australia wicketkeeper/batsman though has again proved his value as skipper for Deccan after turning a bottom-of-the-table finish in the first season of the IPL into victory in the final last year.
Gilchrist’s former Australia opening partner, Matthew Hayden, has had similar problems for Chennai. His 93 from 43 balls against the Delhi Daredevils on March 19th aside, Hayden has only managed to average 22.92 runs in the IPL this season. For all the fuss about the 38-year-old’s use of the shortened Mongoose bat during the current series, most of his performances haven’t quite lived up to the hype.
Still with Raina and opener Murali Vijay, whose 127 from just 56 balls against the Rajasthan Royals on April 3rd was the highest score made by any batsman in the IPL this season, Chennai have more than one batsman in the playing XI who is capable of turning a game on its head.
The problem is what happens if this trio all misfire against Deccan in the semis and the job is left to CSK’s wobbly middle-order. If the Chargers can get at least two of the three cheaply, then victory shouldn’t be too hard to come by provided they don’t revert to some bad mid-season habits.
If Deccan had one major criticism levelled at them as they slumped to five straight losses mid-season, before countering it with their current five-match winning streak, it was their implosion in the latter stages of the innings, both in the field and with the bat.
Deccan’s bowlers were generous to a fault with the runs they were conceding in the final few overs – it’s a problem that’s yet to be entirely solved either – and in their last loss, to the Rajasthan Royals, Deccan somehow messed up the seemingly straightforward task of making six runs off the final over.
With their backs to the wall, Gilchrist has helped his team to turn that around, and they reached the semi-finals with more momentum behind them than any of the other three sides to finish in the top four.
Even with the bowlers failing to stem the flow of runs in their penultimate match of the season, Rohit Sharma, with 68 runs from 38 deliveries against the Kings XI Punjab, showed Deccan’s batsman have the talent to chase down a substantial target.
Deccan have the form, and the winning advantage over Chennai so far this season, and should be able to convert that into their second straight IPL final berth.
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