Jayasuriya's ton stuns Chennai
The Wankhede Stadium at Mumbai hosted yet another match of the DLF Indian Premier League (IPL) and the fans at the stadium went home with every penny well spent. Their home team won, riding on the back of Sanath Jayasuriya who slammed the second fastest ton of the tournament.
In Match 36 of the IPL, the Mumbai Indians beat the Chennai Super Kings by 9 wickets to claim their fourth win of the tournament.
The two teams met earlier in the tournament in a close contest which saw Chennai steal victory by 6 runs and clearly Jayasuriya thought it was ‘payback’ time today. Recovering fully from a groin injury, Sachin Tendulkar took charge of his Mumbai Indians for the first time in the tournament. He won the toss at his home ground and elected to put the opposition in.
Chennai took the field to bat but soon found themselves in dire straits being reduced to 46/4 in the ninth over. In came the Chennai captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and along with trusted ally, Subramaniam Badrinath, the duo piled up runs in quick time demolishing all the hopes Mumbai had of an early Chennai collapse.
Badrinath, who seems to be growing in maturity with every outing, scored 53 off 33 balls. His skipper Dhoni, who is any team’s prize wicket, fought hard and amassed 43 of 35 deliveries.
Mumbai, who at one point looked set to run away with the match, now faced a formidable target of 156 to achieve at 7.8 runs per over.
For the home side, Shaun Pollock bowled a miserly spell of 9 runs in his four overs claiming one wicket. Dwayne Bravo picked up 2 wicket for 37 runs in his four.
The whole stadium erupted when Sachin Tendulkar came out to bat. The ‘Master Blaster’ who has been sitting on the sidelines and cheering his team to victory earlier in the Twenty20 tournament, now had a chance to steer them to glory in front of his home crowd.
Along with Tendulkar, oblivious to the cheers but with resolution written all over his face, was Sri Lankan batsman Sanath Jayasuriya.
Together, the two veterans of the game walked onto the crease. Between them, they have won 102 Man of the Match awards in one-day internationals. Sachin holds the record with 57 while Jayasuriya is second on the list with 45.
But when the chase started, all statistics were thrown out of the window. Jayasuriya, who has been subdued throughout the tournament, was due for a big innings and that came as he made his partner Tendulkar look like a lucky charm.
Tendulkar was obviously shrugging the cobwebs and getting a feel of the playing atmosphere again but Jayasuriya seemed in no mood to procrastinate.
He thundered to his half-century in just 25 balls and his strikes made mere spectators of the Chennai fielders.
It was the ninth over and the score was already 82 when Chennai broke the opening partnership. Off this, the Mumbai skipper scored just 12 runs before he was humbled by Joginder Sharma in front of his home crowd.
But the crowd that started cheering for Tendulkar ended up yelling for Jayasuriya as he whacked the cricket ball and toyed with the Chennai bowling scoring 114 off just 48 balls.
The Wankhede Stadium came alive by a fine batting display at the hands of the artful Sri Lankan who struck 9 balls to the fence and 11 over it.
Robin Uthappa gave him company at the other end but clearly the match belonged to Jayasuriya.
He made the saying "better late than never" worthwhile for Mumbai today and was, without any doubt, adjudicated the Player of the Match as he single-handedly took Mumbai to victory with a good 6 overs to spare.
This gives Mumbai their fourth consecutive win in 8 matches. Chennai have won 6 out of their 10.
The next match of the DLF Indian Premier League will be played at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium at Delhi and will witness the Delhi Daredevils go head to head with the Deccan Chargers.