The cricketing fever is at is best, when two times winner Chennai Super Kings and Champions League Twenty20 winner Mumbai Indians played their first match of the DLF IPL 2012 at Chennai.
Mumbai Indians started off their league with a style, beats MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings by 8 wickets. Newly appointed captain of Mumbai Indians, Harbhajan Singh is very happy with the start they got in IPL 5.
Mumbai Indians attacked Chennai Super Kings from the very first ball of the match. CSK lost their first wicket with just 4 runs on the board. Suresh Rains was the only batsman from CSK who showed some performance with his bat, he made 36 runs with 1 six and 2 fours facing 26 balls.
Captain MS Dhoni was run-out with just 4 runs under his belt. Malinga, Ojha and Pollard got two wickets each while 3 CSK batsmen were run-out.
Playing his first match in IPL, Richard Levi showed a cracking performance. He made 50 runs from just 35 balls with six fours and 3 sixes.
CSK were bowled out with just 112 runs on board and MI made the runs in just 16.5 over. Master blaster Sachin Tendualr looked in good form, but was retired hurt after a speedy ball hit his finger.
Sachin Tendulkar was batting on 16 runs from 15 balls with one four and one huge six.
After loosing yesterday’s match, MS Dhoni said, “It is not a typical Chennai wicket. We started well but we didn’t do well in the last overs, so it was a rusty start for the tournament. We did well though with the bowling.”
When asked to Dhoni that what could be the winning total at this pitch, he said, “It is difficult to judge seeing how they chase. If we would have scored 150-160, there approach would have been different but seeing if you ask me, may be would have though 140-145 odd runs would have been difficult.”
He said, “I felt it was better to bat when we batted and there was something for fast bowlers as well later on but (Richard) Levi batted very well.”
On the other hand, winning captain Harbhajan Singh said, “Well good game, it was good toss to win, wicket was quite unpredictable, not the same wicket that we played earlier, all the boys played well and Levi played terrific.”
He said, “Fielding is a very important part of T20 cricket, one catch, one run out can make a difference, like we got Dhoni out, if he would have stayed then another 30-40 runs would have been difficult on this wicket.”
Richard Levi was named Man-of-the-Match. Playing his very first game in IPL, and bagged with Man-Of-The-match award, something great feelings for him. He said, “It came on nicely on to the bat. One or two bounced a lot. It was unbelievable [opening with Sachin]. He was very easy to talk to.”
