Kolkata chase down 199 to beat Punjab by three wickets, win tournament for second time
The crowd outside Chinnaswamy stadium gave enough hints of the public's interest in the match. Traffic was diverted to other roads as the fans completely swarmed one lane. In the ocean of people, it was difficult to ascertain who was favouring whom. Even inside the stadium, which was packed to the limit, the spectators' loyalty swung like a pendulum, mostly towards the better placed team.
The two teams in the contest — Kolkata Knight Riders and Kings XI Punjab — too, made sure that the match goes to the wire. Though Kolkata, the winners of the 2012 season, managed to pip Punjab by a narrow margin to reclaim the Indian Premier league (IPl) title here on Sunday, it was a fitting end to the 47-day Twenty20 cricket carnival as the two best teams of the season put on display their best game.
Chasing a challenging target of 200, KKR's Piyush Chawla hit the winning runs on the third ball of the last over to pocket the final by three wickets.
In the end, Kolkata's Manish Pandey's 94-run knock made more impact than the unbeaten 115-run innings of Punjab's Wriddhiman Saha. Both the batsmen showed good batting skills to lead their respective team's final charge towards the title.
Earlier, KKR captain Gautam Gambhir put Kings XI Punjab into bat after winning the toss on good batting wicket.
Virender Sehwag, having played a scintillating 122-run in the Qualifier 2 against Mumbai two days back, didn't have a smooth start receiving balls on pads and missing a couple. But a straight shot past the bowler Umesh Yadav on the last ball of the second over raised hope of another vintage Sehwag innings. After all, he isn't the one to play in the hands of the bowlers for long.
Knowing well how Sehwag can change the course of the match, KKR needed to act quickly. Yadav tried to check him with rising chest-high deliveries. It is the ploy that had been used by many in international cricket with good success. And it worked once again. After defending one, leaving second and flicking the third for two runs, Sehwag mistimed the fourth one. The ball rose high into the sky and the hopes of watching another Sehwag special sank. Gambhir took an easy catch.
Skipper George Bailey promoted himself to No 3 but the plan didn't work. Sunil Narine took just one ball to spoil the KXIP experiment. 32 for 2 wasn't a start any team would like to have, especially in the final. If it had developed any thoughts of a low-scoring game in anyone's mind, it was soon to be getting stronger.
As young Manan Vohra and unassuming Wriddhiman Saha were trying to stabilise the innings, the average plunged to below six - 58 for 2 in 10 overs. At that point 150-160 seemed a good fighting total because no one expected it to be the silence before the storm.
Vohra is a naturally aggressive batsman but Saha is an accumulator. It is not to say he can't score quickly. Saha has shown in the past that if the situation demands, he can play aggressively too. One doesn't have to go too far for an example. His 26-ball 54 against Sunrisers Hyderabad during the league phase proved vital in a chase of 206.
May be, just may be, to remind the doubters, he displayed his aggressive side once again on Sunday. He not only out-ran Vohra but also out-foxed Sunil Narine, arguably the best Twenty20 bowler. Off 18 balls he faced from Narine, Saha collected 36 runs. Narine gave 46 off his 4 overs — more than any other KKR bowlers in the match — and took one wicket that came on his first ball of the match.
By the time Vohra, who got a reprieve after Uthappa ingeniously collected the ball front of the wicket to make the delivery illegal, got out (67 off 52), he had already shared a 129-run stand (in 73 balls) with Saha and pushed Punjab towards a big total.
Narine was also guilty of granting Saha a life when he dropped a caught and bowled chance in the 16thover. Saha was batting on 60 runs then. In the next 21 balls, Saha added another 54 runs to his tally to unbeaten 115 - his first century in the IPl. Saha also became the first batsman to hit a century in the IPl final.
It also meant that Punjab batsmen put together 150 runs in the last 10 overs to somewhat recover from the slow start. But they still fell short by another 10 runs as KKR batsmen led by Pandey surpassed the target with three balls to spare.
Pandey should be praised for his maturity as played like senior pro while wickets kept falling from the other end. His continued presence on the one end kept KKR in the hunt as the home boy made sure the team never fall behind the required run-rate. It became more apparent when his departure on 179 put KKR's chase in danger.
Thanks to Piyush Chawla's timely hits — one off Mitchell Johnson for a six in the penultimate over and another off Parwinder Awana for four in the last over — that KKR crossed the target safely.
Brief Scores
Kings Eleven Punjab: 199/4 (Wriddhiman Saha 115 no, Manan Vohra 62) lost to Kolkata Knight Riders: 200/7 in 19.3 overs (Manish Pandey 94 no, Yusuf Pandey 36, Karanveer Singh 4/54)by three wickets.