CLT20 2011 Match 3: Mumbai Indians and Malinga Steal Victory from Chennai Super Kings

Michael Hussey loves India and the IPL. But perhaps he loves the Chennai Super Kings even more. That would explain why he played the almost match winning knock before a maverick batsman from a beleaguered team stole the match away. It was literally that as the Mumbai Indians handed the defending champions of the Champions League Twenty20 2011 a rare defeat in the first match.

Lasith Malinga

Michael Hussey gave the Chennai Super Kings a sensational beginning to their Champions League Twenty20 campaign when he scored eighty-one outstanding run off only forty-seven balls. In that alone, the weight of the Chennai Super Kings seemed to rest on their most experienced, senior most Australian cricketer, having warmed himself rather well on Australia’s tour of Sri Lanka, in the Test series ironically.

Although the Chennai Super Kings eventually ended up with 158 on board, there was general optimism given that the Chennai Super Kings have been supremely successful, particularly with their popular skipper, Mahendra Singh Dhoni who himself scored twenty-two runs towards the end of the innings that was virtually dominated by Hussey's emphatic knock of eighty-one runs that seemed to have sealed the Mumbai Indians' fate.

That was because Mumbai Indians were suffering from a spate of injuries, leaving their team short on Indian player options and allowing for the IPL to bend the foreign player cap rule in order to fill up the slots to make up the playing eleven. Sachin Tendulkar drew strong passionate reactions from the public, but unfortunately the Mumbai Indians captain himself was benched leaving the captaincy duty to Harbhajan Singh.

After a brief thirty-nine run start, Davy Jacobs was the first to go and beyond the Mumbai Indians could fathom the onset of the mayhem, they were reduced to four down for fifty-nine, Suresh Raina one of the unlikely wicket takers for the Chennai Super Kings, pitching in with two wickets. The Mumbai Indians' game seemed well and truly over when Kieron Pollard was dimissed in the sixteenth over with the Mumbai Indians score reading seven down for 106.

But the fat lady had not sung yet. Lasith Malinga batted out of his skin for the Mumbai Indians to enjoy shock defeat over the Chennai Super Kings in the Champions League Twenty20 2011. And the timing of that innings could not be any better with the stand in skipper by his side. Pollard's twenty-two runs seemed like a distant dream as Malinga was fuelling a few of his own. While Harbhajan stayed on nineteen, Malinga had moved onto thirty-seven runs from only eighteen balls, eighteen of those runs coming in only three balls with three sixes that changed the match once more, giving the Mumbai Indians a rare chance.

Needing twelve from the final over, both men took credit for a boundary each before Mumbai Indians were celebrating a shock win with a ball to spare to stun the Chennai Super Kings.