IPL Day 20: Mouthwatering stuff

Just what motivates a man of 37 years, retired from all forms of the game except IPL and has achieved almost everything that young cricketers would dream of. What else does he have to prove and to who? These are questions of mere mortals, to men like Haydos, they simply do what they are meant to do – compete hard, bloody hard. In this kind of a form, it doesn’t look like he’s gonna handover the orange cap to anyone almost through the length of the tournament.

The greatest pleasure of watching Hayden over the years has been his arrogant style of walking down the pitch against bowlers of all kind and depositing that red cherry over the stands. I can never forget one shot that he played against Shoaib Akhtar in Morroco in a one-day international. When most batsmen instinctively tend to go back against the pace of Shoaib Akhtar, this man walks down almost a quarter of the track and hits Shoaib’s thunderbolt out of the ground and doesn’t even bother to look up the ball and rather checks the edge of his bat! Its almost like spitting at the bowler – oh… this is what you’ve got – is it?

Today Haydos was in that kind of a mood, dancing down against the spinners and thwarting them out of the ground and that one-handed six of Sreesanth was probably the shot of the day (till I changed my opinion on seeing Mahela’s six against Murali). As if that’s not enough headache for Yuvraj Singh, Dhoni joined in the party too. That one over against VRV Singh, Dhoni flat batted a square cut for a six over point, then hit a home run and followed that up with a forehand smash to mid-wicket. Rain or no rain, CSK gave themselves the best chance of winning by posting a mammoth total.

King’s XI started off rather badly with Sohal gifting his wicket away.That didn’t deter Katich much though; he was in a mood to make a match of it and he was smashing the CSK bowlers - both spinners and fast bowlers, all around the park. Just when he was starting to look dangerous, played a horrendous shot to gift his wicket to a loosener from Balaji. Yuvraj at the other end was in his elements from the beginning smashing Murali for a huge six and when he tried to replicate that again, Goni generously continued Chennai’s catch dropping tradition in this IPL!Yuvraj rubbed salt into CSK's wounds by hitting the biggest six of IPL soon after. And with an in-form Mahela for company, the chase was certainly on.

If Hayden at his belligerent best scored at a strike rate of 153, Mahela bettered that in his own silky grace style. He started off by reverse sweeping his country man for a boundary and that inside out six over cover against Murali was straight out of heaven, but equally effective were his exploits against Balaji especially that flat pull for a six. Yuvraj and Mahela put together a 50 run partnership in next to no time and just when CSK were looking like losing control of the match, Dhoni brought in Suresh Raina out of nowhere to bowl the 15th and 17th overs and he did exactly what his captain wanted him to do – choked up the runs. And Balaji bowled an icy cool final over to close out the match.

BTW there was one match earlier in the day right? I guess Rajasthan Royals won against a not so Royal Challengers!