Well, to start off, after India's world cup win on 2nd April 2011, I hardly care about what is going on in IPL. Earlier seasons were far more exciting given that nothing big as "World Cup" win had occurred before any of them. Also, this year's IPL has recorded the lowest TV ratings among all seasons as per news article - http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/media/entertainment/media/ipl-4-opens-to-lowest-tv-viewership-ratings/articleshow/8076188.cms .
But barring all this, I have been keenly watching one person - Sachin Tendulkar. So much is there to learn from him - his humility, his calmness, his enthusiasm. I wonder how he can maintain that pace at this age when I am practically bored and lazy in my early twenties. He is the only reason, I am supporting Mumbai Indians ( apart from the fact that I own a jersey of MI :) )
Getting back to the present match, CSK started off well with Murali and Mike Hussey getting a few good hits here and there, but soon CSK succumbed to some superb bowling by Pune Warriors. Dhoni gave some support to Hussey. Raina and Morkel didn't trouble the scorers much. Hussey nearly stayed there till the end with a well timed 60 odd score.Well, in the end, CSK managed to score 142/6 in 20 overs. Not a very competitive score, given the boundaries are smaller in this ground than boundaries in other IPL grounds. Jerome Taylor, replacing Wayne Parnell, played his first match for Pune today and took 3 wickets. None of the bowlers had his economy rate above 8, which is quite commendable in this format of the game.
Now, coming to second innings, somehow there was no urge shown by the batsmen to make runs. Yuvraj, the captain, led the team in this front. He was very very tired and was sweating like a pig. Today was just not his day. Ashwin bowled superbly coupled with Bollinger. Most of the bowlers were very low on economy rate as per game standards. Chennai were superb on the field, and saved around 15-20 just by saving the boundaries and singles. Manish Pandey failed to create an impression on his Pune debut. It seemed that Pune were too complacent with the batting. In the end, even 142 seemed a mammoth total to chase, partly because of the slow nature of the pitch, which was clearly visible with the number of mis-hits by the Pune batsmen. Pune lost the game by 25 runs.
The net result of this was that Chennai won a critical game and are still in race for the semi-final spot. They have a reputation of making a good come back. Lets see, how the path unfolds for the defending champions from here.
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