Kolkata tossed out of IPL semis
Once stand-in Mumbai Indians captain Dwayne Bravo won the toss and decided to bat first against the Kolkata Knight Riders in the final regular season match of 2010, the result was always going to be academic.
Sixth-placed Kolkata entered the match at long-odds to jump the queue and book a semi-final place, with a disappointing net run-rate of -0.456 always likely to be their undoing, even if Sourav Ganguly’s team had batted first and won against the top side.
Victory alone would not have been enough. The margin would have needed to have been unprecedented in the competition for KKR to sneak into a semi-final spot.
Any chances there may have been were extinguished when the coin landed on the ground at Eden Gardens and Bravo sent Kolkata out to field first.
“Yes, it has been a not-so-good tournament for us, but there are a lot of positives that we can draw from this now,” Ganguly said as the curtains were drawn on his side’s chances. It was a much more measured review of his team’s efforts than he’d offered in the heat of battle, when following an abysmal loss against the Royal Challengers Bangalore the skipper frankly stated: “If we play cricket like this we don't deserve to be in the semis.”
It’s matches such as that seven-wicket loss to Bangalore and their subsequent nine-wicket loss to the Chennai Super Kings that did the damage for Kolkata, not the way the coin landed in the 56th match of a season that started so positively for KKR, with an 11-run victory over the defending champions, Deccan Chargers, and then a seven-run victory over Bangalore at home in the fourth match of the season.
Only four more victories followed in their next 11 matches, and that was a telling factor for Kolkata, who will now be watching from the sidelines as Mumbai, Deccan, Chennai and Bangalore contest the semi-finals later in the week.
Tags: