Sourav Ganguly made an excellent comeback to the Indian Premier League with an unbeaten 32 that helped the Pune Warriors India to a win over the Deccan Chargers at Hyderabad. This was the 55th game of the Indian Premier League and saw the Pune Warriors clinch their second successive win in the competition. This was also their fourth overall in the IPL.
The Chargers had their chances but after an excellent opening stand between Shikhar Dhawan and DB Ravi Teja, the side just fell away. Wickets fell at the most inopportune of times and after getting off to a decent score in the first ten overs, they made only 64 in the second half of the innings.
It was the Pune spinners who were able to throttle the Deccan Chargers. Yuvraj Singh, who hasn’t had too much of a bowl in the tournament so far, completed his four overs and conceded only 17. More importantly, he scalped a couple of wickets, including that of Dhawan to break a serious-looking partnership. At the other end, Rahul Sharma’s impressive IPL continued as he went for only 24 in his four overs and he got a wicket.
With only JP Duminy to shore up the middle-order after Kumar Sangakkara suffered an early demise, the side would have expected some lusty hitting towards the end with the score reading 119/4 in 18.
Unfortunately for the Chargers, Duminy fell at that stage to Mitchell Marsh, who got another couple of wickets in the same over. 17 came from the last two overs and the Chargers were restricted to 136 in their 20 overs.
One would have thought that for the Chargers to have a decent chance of competing they would have to take an early wicket or two. Unfortunately for the home team, Jesse Ryder walked out with an intention to go after the bowling from the word go.
Dale Steyn was carved away for two fours and a six in the very first over and followed it up with a couple of boundaries in the second. The morale beaten, the Chargers tried out six bowlers for the six Powerplay overs but none of them worked for them as the openers got to 52/0 at the end of the sixth over.
While Ryder did get dismissed right after, Manish Pandey ended with a 49 to his name, but most importantly, Ganguly, who, in his own words, was facing the toughest day of his career after not having batted for five months went on to score a run-a-ball and unbeaten 32. Pune won by six wickets with 10 balls to spare.