Putting ‘goodbye’ in
the headline could have more significance than perhaps you can possibly
imagine; of course, the very few who ‘read’ these pages must have understood. Yes,
we’re referring to the Goodbye post a few days back. However, that apparently
painful post did not contain any kind of commitment or decisive action on the
part of the writer which is significant in light of some famed international cricketers
saying quits to the game through public announcements and then coming back
again as if nothing was the matter. Therefore, that ‘goodbye’ meant nothing to
the public, even if it could’ve hurt this writer a lot since he’s been rather harassed
four times in the last four months for the purportedly suspicious visitors to
the site who never read, but don’t care to go on a sabotaging rampage. Out of a morbid fear I've stopped posting my links on the social media too. What a pity! But still,
why should I care who read and not read but try to damage! This site is very
dear to me and it’s not at all surprising that cricket has changed the ‘goodbye’
to ‘welcome again’! The last league match between Mumbai Indians (MI) and Chennai
Super Kings (CSK) last night acted like a gamechanger for me, if not for
IPL-2022 or cricket.
The MI, already thrown
out of the IPL play-offs, started nonetheless with a vengeance igniting fiery
spells by Daniel Sams taking two scalps in the very first over of the match,
then going on to take his third in the fifth over and joined in by an equally
lethal Jasprit Bumrah, a tad too late for his team, who took one, thus reducing
CSK to a shaky 17/4 from the scary start of 5/3.
Why this vengeance? Well,
perhaps it has everything to do with the reinstated CSK captain MS Dhoni or MSD
who, in fact, literally threw MI out of contention reliving his role of the
Finisher on 22nd April, at a time when the ‘home’ franchise was
desperately looking for its first win after losing six on the trot. CSK could
never recover from this nightmare last night, getting all out for a pitiful 97
which is CSK’s second lowest score in IPL history. Although MI captain Rohit
Sharma failed once again his team managed to win the match by 5 wickets. Most significantly,
this MI win now threw MSD’s CSK out of contention for the play-offs. And therefore,
we bid goodbye for the five-time Champs MI and the defending Champs CSK.
Gujarat Titans (GT),
the titanic newbie, became the first team to seal a play-off spot with 18
points followed by the second newbie Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) with 16 points.
With MI and CSK out of contention and LSG almost in needing to win one out of
the remaining two matches, there are still six teams still in contention for at
least two of the four play-off spots, and every one of them needing to win all
their remaining matches to form probable locked-in situations with 16 or 14
points each when the net run-rate comes in as the decider. Of course, Rajasthan
Royals has a better chance at 14 points with two matches to go. Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) is the only team with 3 matches to go and at 10 points, losing all the last five matches on the trot after a resurgence.
The Royal Challengers
Bangalore (RCB) had 14 points with two matches left and tonight they have faced
the Punjab Kings (PBKS), still in contention at 10 points with three matches
left, hoping to get the precious two points to virtually secure its spot. However,
put into bat the PBKS’s opener Jonny Bairstow blasted away with incredible 7
sixes and 4 fours in his innings of 66 runs off just 29 balls (scored his fifty
in 21 balls). The other Englishman in the team, Liam Livingstone, followed him religiously,
blasting 70 runs in 44 balls with 5 fours and 4 mammoth sixes. The English duo
thus ensured their team score beyond 200, and all others fought hard to finally
score 209/9, setting a target 210 in 20 overs which looked beyond RCB despite
du Plessis, Kohli, Glen Maxwell and Karthik. For RCB, fast-bowler Hazelwood
suffered the most conceding 64 runs in his allotted 4 overs. Finally, PBKS won
the match by 54 runs and joined the Delhi
Capitals (DC) at 12 points each and two matches remaining for each. RCB has one
last match and a tough one too against the No.1 GT on 19th May to
get to 16 points that could possibly give them a spot in the top four.
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