It all started wrong for the Rajasthan Royals when their captain Shane Warne called wrong at the toss, and his Mumbai Indians counterpart Shaun Pollock asked his team to take first strike on a pitch that looked a batting beauty, albeit with a few cracks. Shane Warne wasn’t unduly worried about batting first, and conceded that if his batsmen posted a big score, his team had the wherewithal to tie down the hosts.
After starting tight in the first couple of overs, Shaun Pollock beat his ex-captain Graeme Smith with good change of pace, and had him stumped by Yogesh Takawale on the second attempt. The loss of his opening partner didn’t seem to have any effect on the diminutive Swapnil Asnodkar, who continued playing his natural game, eliciting comparisons with the little dynamite Romesh Kaluwitharana from Sri Lanka. The other big draw for the Royals so far in the tournament, Yusuf Pathan tried to whip a full delivery from Ashish Nehra only to miss the ball and find his middle stump uprooted. Shane Watson, the Royals’ leading run scorer in the tournament walked out to bat with his team in a spot of bother at 21 for 2 in the fourth over, and went about doing the consolidation with Asnodkar. The duo added 53 runs in 5.4 overs, when Watson (32) played a reckless stroke and dragged the ball back onto his stumps.
This was the opening the hosts needed, and from thereon, they kept picking up wickets at regular intervals. Lesser-experienced bowlers like Dhawal Kulkarni and Rohan Raje used change of pace to good effect and picked up two wickets apiece, while Ashish Nehra (3-19) and Dwayne Bravo (2-12) combined well and cleaned up the tail. Change of pace did the trick for the hosts; as many as four Royals’ wickets fell to slower ones or ones that were marginally quicker than normal deliveries. The visitors were shot for 103, their lowest score in the tournament, with as many as 22 deliveries remaining in their allotted 20 overs. Asnodkar was top scorer with 39, while as many as eight other batsmen were dismissed for single digit scores.
Credit should also go to the Mumbai Indians fielders, for they were sharp on the field today. Yogesh Takawale, the wicketkeeper, who had a hand in the dismissal of Graeme Smith at the top of the innings, pulled off two sharp chances later on, one running backward and then diving forward, and one diving forward to send back Ravindra Jadeja and Mahesh Rawat respectively.
Faced with a target of 104, the Mumbai Indians’ went about their task of knocking off the runs in a very calm manner – very unusual in Twenty20 cricket. The first three overs only produced eight runs, and just as the required run rate was inching closer to the six-runs-per-over mark, Munaf Patel’s second over (fourth over of the innings) went for 13 runs, and the Mumbai Indians again had things under control.
The opening pair of Yogesh Takawale and Sanath Jayasuriya put together 41 runs in 45 balls, when Jayasuriya, who was just getting into his stride, holed out to Yusuf Pathan on the mid wicket fence. Shane Warne introduced himself into the attack later than most expected, but he needed very little time to get amongst the wickets; Yogesh Takawale didn’t read his first delivery, the quickish zooter and went back to cut it, only to miss it and have his off stump pegged back; he would be dismissed for a well-compiled 27. Dwayne Bravo’s short stay at the wicket saw him let off once at short cover, but he failed to capitalise on that let-off and soon holed out to the man at short midwicket. It was left to the Mumbai Indians’ Bangalore-import Robin Uthappa and the impressive local lad Abhishek Nayar to see the home team through. Uthappa finished with 34 runs, while Nayar remained unbeaten on 12.
Mumbai Indians, by virtue of the 7-wicket win here at the DY Patil Sports Stadium in Navi Mumbai, move into fifth place in the points table, while the Rajasthan Royals, although equal on points with Kings XI Punjab, slip down one place to second by virtue of a lower net run rate.
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