Mumbai Indians were on track to making the final of the sixth edition of the Indian Premier league after being in a strong position against the Rajasthan Royals in the Qualifier 2 here at the Eden Gardens on Friday.
At the time of going to press, chasing a victory target of 166 set by the Royals, Mumbai were 69 for no loss at the end of nine overs with Dwayne Smith batting on 33 off 28 balls with the help of five fours and Aditya Tare on 34 in 25 balls with three hits to the boundary and two over it. They required 97 to win from 11 overs with all their wickets intact.
From the beginning of the Mumbai innings, both Smith and Tare played their shots to give a good start to their team. They were ably supported by some bad fielding by the Royals who gave away 12 runs.
Earlier, the Rajasthan innings was a mixed bag with a good run-rate being maintained till the 15th over but they never had enough wickets in the hand to post a huge score, managing 165/6 in the end.
After a one-hour delay to the scheduled start due to a short evening shower, Rajasthan captain Rahul Dravid won the toss and elected to bat. The 9pm start though did not result in the reduction of any overs.
And, by the look of the first over, it seemed that Dravid wanted to make the most of each of the 20 overs. A full-length fourth delivery by Mitchell Johnson was driven to covers which resulted in the first of Dravid's seven boundaries.
Two more in Johnson's next over, one elegantly played to the long-off boundary and the other flicked to the square-leg resulted in some verbal duel between the batsman and the bowler. Though Dravid had played and missed Johnson on some occasions but the big picture read that Royals had done the important job of not giving an early wicket to Mumbai's danger man in Johnson. By the end of first power-play of six overs, Royals had reached 42 without the loss of a wicket.
Harbhajan Singh came in to bowl the seventh over and that is when Royals seemed to have lost their way. Trying to sweep Harbhajan, Ajinkya Rahane completely missed the line of the ball as his leg-stump got the damage. In came Shane Watson but couldn't make the impact as in Harbhajan's very next over he also tried to play the sweep but only managed a top-edge to square-leg. Royals score read 60 for 2 in 8.4 overs.
Pressure was firmly on Dravid now to take the team ahead. He played some attractive shots, an inside-out one to left-armer Pragyan Ojha between the extra-cover and long-off boundary standing out, but disappointingly for him, managed 43 from 37 balls and got out to Harbhajan, caught at mid-wicket. He hit the ground with the bat a couple of times after getting out, signifying a livid self. The score then read 87 for 4 in 12.1 overs.
Harbhajan was the one who turned things around for Mumbai with envious figures of 3 for 23 in his four overs. And, his pedigreed wickets in Dravid, Watson and Rahane say the rest.
It became 108 for 6 after exactly three overs with the wickets of Stuart Binny for 27, who to his credit hit the only six of the RR innings, and Kevon Cooper for 4. A 56-run partnership between Brad Hodge and Dishant Yagnik in 27 balls took Rajasthan to 165. Yagnik played the shots, scoring 31 from 17 balls with four boundaries, while Hogde was the anchor in his 20-ball 19.
Rajasthan were also helped by some shoddy work done by lasith Malinga, who bowled the final over of the innings and gave away 18 runs. He bowled three wides, one of them resulted in five runs as byes. He was also hit for two boundaries and one yorker was creamed to the point boundary by Hodge as Royals ended on a high.
Brief Scores
MI: 69/0 in nine overs (Dwayne Smith 33, Aditya Tare 34) against RR: 165/6 (Rahul Dravid 43, Dishant Yagnik not out 31; Harbhajan Singh 3/23, Kieron Pollard 2/6). (Mumbai score incomplete).