Mumbai Indians beat Kings XI Punjab

Mumbai Indians beat the Kings XI Punjab by eight wickets and with almost four overs to spare, thanks to a belligerent unbeaten 66 by Dwayne Bravo and his 82 runs stand with Sachin Tendulkar.

Chasing 120 for a win, Mumbai Indians opened their inning with a surprise opening pair of Dwayne Bravo and Sanath Jayasuriya, and they faced up to Brett Lee and Irfan Pathan. Jayasuriya’s bad run in the tournament continued, as he cut one straight to the third-man, where Wilkin Mota took a beautiful running catch; Jayasuriya gone for 4. In the meantime, Bravo was dropped by Pathan off his bowling, and he cut loose against S.Sreesanth, taking him for 21 runs in the over.

To counter this, Piyush Chawla had to be brought into the attack within the first six overs, and he had an immediate award in the form of previous game’s top scorer, Ajinkya Rahane getting out LBW.
Unfortunately for the Kings, these were the only two successes that they got. Sachin Tendulkar joined Bravo and the duo knew that if they didn’t lose any wickets for the next two or three overs, the runs would start coming. That is exactly what happened, as the duo built the inning slowly, but steadily. Bravo smashed Yuvi for a six, and then Chawla was hit for a couple of boundaries; one by each.

Immediately after the break, Tendulkar hit Lee for a couple of fours, and then swatted Chawla for another six, before Bravo wrapped up the match in fine style by pulling Pathan away to the fence.

Earlier, the Kings XI Punjab began very well and at one stage looked good to get to 160-170. Sunny Sohal began by taking on Lasith Malinga and though both, Simon Katich and Irfan Pathan were goners without scoring, Punjab was 50/2 in the sixth over and looking good for more.

It was Sohal’s wicket thanks to a brilliant presence of mind by Tendulkar and some sloppy work by the batsman himself, that triggered a collapse. He smashed a 23-ball 43. In the end, it was only Karan Goel’s unbeaten 20 that took the Punjab score past 100 and gained some respectability.Harbhajan scalped one wicket, but conceded only nine runs in his four overs, where as Duminy had 2/15 in four.