Brendon McCullum and Kochi Tuskers captain Mahela Jayawardene upstaged Sachin Tendulkar's maiden Indian Premier League century as Mumbai Indians' bowlers failed to defend a score of 182 for 2.
McCullum and Jayawardene, who opened the innings instead of VVS Laxman as the elegant Indian batsman was ruled out of the match because of an injury shortly before the toss got the run chase of 183 to an outstanding start as the duo added 128 runs for the first wicket inside 14 overs. This opening stand gave Kochi the perfect launch pad to carve out one of the biggest upsets of the fourth edition of the Indian Premier League.
While McCullum was at his aggressive best and took the attack to the Mumbai Indians' bowling attack starting with their spearhead Lasith Malinga, while Jayawardene kept the scoreboard ticking over by playing some exquisite and copybook cricketing shots to prove that big shots aren't always needed in Twenty20 cricket. Malinga was surprisingly off- colour and his second over cost 17 runs with McCullum hitting three of the four boundaries in that over. McCullum and Jayawardene were also helped by some shoddy fielding by Rohit Sharma and Ali Murtaza respectively. While McCullum was dropped by Sharma at first slip off Malinga in the first ball of Kochi Tuskers' innings; Murtaza put down Jayawardene at backward point in the sixth over.
These two lives apart, McCullum and Jaywardene were on top of the Mumbai Indians' attack for the majority of their innings. McCullum was the first of the two to reach his half-century when he took two runs off R Sathish to reach the landmark in the 41st ball he faced before Jayawardene reached his half-century shortly afterwards. And, just when it looked as though McCullum and Jayawardene (56 in 36 balls) would take the Kochi Tuskers home, Malinga pulled out one of his dipping incoming yorkers to clean bowl his Sri Lankan teammate. Malinga then came back to clean bowl McCullum for a well-made 81 in 60 balls (10x4, 2x6) to give Mumbai Indians an outside chance of winning the match, but Ravindra Jadeja, who was promoted to No. 3, ensured Kochi Tuskers would win their first IPL match as he hit consecutive sixes off Murtaza to help KTK upset Mumbai Indians. Jadeja remained unbeaten on 25 (11 balls) as Kochi Tuskers chased down the target of 183 with eight wickets to spare in the penultimate over.
Munaf Patel (3-0-15-0) was the pick of Mumbai Indians' bowlers; but Malinga (2-42) and Pollard (3-0-43-0) had a nightmare outing with the ball. Harbhajan Singh too failed to take any wickets and this only exposed the over-reliace Mumbai Indians have on Malinga to dismiss the opposition batsmen.
Earlier, Tendulkar survived a couple of LBW shouts very early in his innings and was fortunate on both occasions that umpire Paul Reiffel turned down Vinay Kumar's vociferous appeals. Replays showed though the ball would have clipped the leg stump on the first appeal and taken out the off stump in the first ball of the fourth over when the second appeal was made. These scares apart, Tendulkar never looked in trouble and wasn't put under any pressure by Kochi Tuskers' bowlers, and he even pulled out a helicopter shot ala MS Dhoni towards the end of Mumbai Indians' innings.
Tendulkar was well supported by the impressive Ambati Rayudu as the pair added 116 runs for the second wicket in just over 11 overs. Rayudu, who joined Tendulkar in the middle after Davy Jacobs (12 in 21 balls) was clean bowled by Raiphi Gomez in the ninth over with Mumbai Indians' score on 61; looked in imperious touch and treated most of the KTK bowlers with disdain. He hit three boundaries and four sixes, including two consecutive massive hits off Gomez in the 11th over of the match which cost 18 runs. Rayudu made 53 runs in 33 balls before he was run out in the last over of Mumbai Indians' innings.
Meanwhile, Tendulkar was going strong at the other end as he hit boundaries at regular intervals and rotated the strike. He reached his half-century in the first ball of the 14th over; the 43rd of his innings and had seven hits to the fence. Tendulkar then moved gears with alarming ease as he took 20 runs of the 16th over bowled by Vinay Kumar as he hit two sixes and a four in that over. Tendulkar reached his century off the last ball of Mumbai Indians' innings to remain unbeaten on 100 (66 balls, 12x4, 3x6). Tendulkar, who has now scored 201 runs in IPL-4 without being dismissed once also wrested away the Orange Cap from Kolkata Knight Riders' Jacques Kallis (187 runs).
RP Singh was by far the best of the KTK bowlers and conceded only 15 runs in his four overs. Vinay Kumar (0-48), Thisara Perera (0-38) and Gomez (1-29) all had a day to forget; and Ramesh Powar, who replaced Muttiah Muralitharan, bowled a solitary over for 12 runs.
SOURCE-yahoo cricket
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