Needing 146 for victory and seemingly cruising at 97/3 after 14 overs with JP Duminy and Dwayne Bravo well set, the Mumbai Indians collapsed in astonishing fashion gifting the Deccan Chargers an important 19-run win and putting themselves under severe pressure to claim a semifinal spot with just six matches remaining.
Though the Deccan Chargers captain Adam Gilchrist deserves plenty of credit for having the foresight to throw the ball to part-time slow bowler Rohit Sharma who delivered with a hat trick, even they would have been surprised at how poorly the Mumbai Indians batted.
Bravo started the rot when he slogged unnecessarily at the first ball of T. Suman's third over sending it into the hands of Ryan Harris who did well to retain his balance, hold the ball and stay inside the field of play at long-off.
Sharma came on to bowl the 16th over and with his penultimate ball saw Abishek Nayar simply miss the ball to bowl, off his next ball Sharma got rid of Harbhajan Singh. The most unlikely of hat-tricks arrived at the start of his next over when Duminy in attempting to sweep nicked the ball into the gloves of Gilchrist. Duminy's 52 off 48 balls was a fine innings but in the circumstances it was a wasted effort.
Sharma, who also claimed the wicket of Saurabh Tiwary, finished with 4/6 in two overs, enough to snap up the man-of-the-match accolade. “I do work very hard on my bowling in the nets, so I'm very happy with a hat-trick,” said Sharma
Tendulkar, who felt his side did well to restrict the Deccan Chargers to 145/6 was at a loss to explain his team's defeat. “Our bowling was fantastic, but our batting in the middle didn't go according to plan,” said Tendulkar. Again the Mumbai Indians failed to get off to a good start, with Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya being dismissed in the RP Singh's first over. Those two wickets drove Singh's total to 15 for the tournament, lifting him to the top of the standings in the Purple Cap category.
“I love South African conditions, it's great so far for me especially as a swing bowler,” said Singh, who claimed 2/19.
Earlier the Deccan Chargers had huffed and puffed their way through to
145/6 with a number of batsmen getting starts but nobody able to score more than Sharma's 38.
“I thought 145 was okay, it's the kind of total that's been competitive across the country,” said Gilchrist, who by his standards made a patient 25 that took him 29 balls. “We really fought hard towards the end of our innings and then we did a good job protecting the boundary when we were in the field. I thought our guys really thought hard about their plans with the ball which was good to see,” he added.
Wednesday's win ended a run of three straight defeats for the Deccan Chargers and lifted them to second on the table.
