Rajasthan thrash Kings XI Punjab

The Rajasthan Royals gave the Kings XI Punjab a thrashing of their lives as the latter crashed to a 78 runs loss at the Kingsmead in Durban. With this win, the Rajasthan Royals moved to the top of the points table with nine points, where as the Kings XI Punjab go down to the sixth position with eight points.

The Kings won the toss and for some surprising reason, decided to field first. The Royals decided to open the inning with wicket-keeper Naman Ojha and gave another chance to Graeme Smith to open the inning. The duo did not let the team down, and got onto the business of scoring quickly as soon as they started.

Ojha latched into Ramesh Powar’s first over of the inning with a couple of sixes and a four, while Smith hit a four off the very first delivery he faced. Yusuf Abdullah was called into the attack to stem the flow, but for a change, nothing went his way either, as the Royals got off to 57/0 in the first six overs.

The spinners were brought in immediately after the fielding restrictions were lifted, and while they managed to slow the pace down, every over still saw a boundary hit in it. Abdullah was brought back to get some wickets, but his second over cost him 14 runs, and the Royals looked set for a huge total at the strategic time-out; 93/0 in ten.

Usually the post-ten overs mark has seen wickets fall down, but today’s match was different as it only got the run-rate going skywards. At 128/0, it became the best ever partnership for IPL this year but Powar finally managed to get one back for Punjab when Piyush Chawla caught one at the boundary.

Yusuf Pathan was promoted to number three, but he left early; however it was Ravindra Jadeja who ensured that there would be no hiccups after that as he caressed his way to a 12-ball 33; one of the quickest innings in the IPL. Ojha scored 68 as the Royals got the highest total of the tournament this year in 211/4 in the twenty overs.

Punjab’s start was as bad as it could get. S. Sohal was snapped up off the first delivery, while Karan Goel left off the last one of the first over to leave them at 2/2 in one over.

A twenty-odd run partnership followed, between Kumar Sangakkara and Simon Katich, but both fell in quick succession and in six overs Punjab was 29/4.

After this, any sort of a recovery would have been marginal and that was it was. Yuvraj hit some lusty blows off Warne that got him to 48, but the rest of the batsmen did not last too long and the Kings capitulated to 133/8 in their twenty overs.

Graeme Smith was the man-of-the-match.