The Indian Premier League (IPL) has given us cricket lovers an amazingly mind-boggling feel so far.
By Dr Makarand Jewrikar
All matches are going up to the last over and no cricket expert can fully predict the outcome of the game. That’s why we love IPL so much! This gentleman’s game’s inherent nature is one of unpredictability. The most recent and explosive match that was played between Mumbai Indians and Sunrisers Hyderabad was a spectacular show and it was a sheer show of high quality cricket from both the sides.
Sunrisers Hyderabad posted a mammoth total of 277 runs in 20 overs, and it is the highest total in IPL’s history, so far. Abhishek Sharma and Travis head’s explosive innings were the highlight of their batting side. Sharma took a mere 23 balls for his 63, while Head took 24 balls to score 62. This laid the foundation for their huge total. H. Klassen made 80 not out, and A. Markrum’s 42 not out helped the hosts to surpass the 250 runs mark.
In their chase, Mumbai got to a perfect start with Tilak Verma’s 64 and Tim David’s 42.
Mumbai Indians were looking solid till the 12th over. We all felt that we were about to witness a miraculous run chase in the history of the IPL. But, this game of cricket and especially the IPL is unpredictable. The cricket ball became soft after the 12th over of the Mumbai Indians’ innings and their star bowler, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, gave away only five runs in his spell to MI chief Hardik Pandya. Unadkat and Pat Cummins took pace off the ball, and bowled slower ones so it was a very difficult time for the batter to hit boundaries or sixes.
This decoding of slow balls after the 12th over of MI innings was the winning factor for Hyderabad. In the 13th to the 16th, the MI batters could manage only one six and that itself told the story of how they lost the chase.
The key difference between the two captains is that Cummins, the captain of Sunrisers Hyderabad, is like a sponge, learning all the much-needed small and even very tiny aspects of T20 cricket, whereas Pandya has yet to figure out winning equations for his team. He has to get his act together quickly as we know this IPL format is ruthless and won’t give many chances for teams to recover and any failures can prove to be very costly. But Pandya is a fighter, we believe he will bounce back!
It was cricket and T20 at its best in this recent IPL match between these two teams. History was made with endless amounts of records broken, maximum runs scored in a single day of an IPL match; fastest 100 by any team ( MI) and the list goes on. It was a paisa wasool blockbuster day for cricket fans.
Contributed by Dr Makarand Jewrikar, Badr Al Sama’a Hospital, Nizwa.
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