IPL 3 Match 48: Thumping Victory for Chennai Sees Them 2nd; Sorrow for Sourav Continues

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Sreelata YellamrazuApr 13 2010

What a carnage Chennai Super Kings inflicted on the Kolkata Knight Riders in a crucial encounter! First, they stung them with the ball and then, they buried them with the bat.

suresh raina

If the KKR team were expected to pull up their socks after the lessons dished out by their captain, Sourav Ganguly, none was evident as the CSK team shellshocked the visitors.

As many as four wickets fell in quick succession, with spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, nearly pulling off the hat trick although umpire Simon Taufel failed to notice the batsman gloving the ball. But Ashwin was not denied.

Even in the presence of a stalwart like Muttiah Muralitharan who was brought in for this match, Ashwin was the outstanding performer on the night, accounting first for Chris Gayle who was stumped in the third over with Brendon McCullum caught of the last ball of the same over.

Ashwin returned to bowl his next over, taking the wicket of David Hussey, another sharp stumping by the CSK captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni. In the midst, Sourav Ganguly was trapped lbw by Doug Bollinger, a tad unlucky decision as the ball appeared to be slipping down the leg side.

At the end of this carnage and by the start of the fourth over, KKR's scoreboard read: four down, nineteen runs on board. But it was not the end. Angelo Matthews and Manoj Tiwary began stitching up KKR's open wounds. Slowly and surely they began to get the train moving again, with Matthews looking to break free with a couple of wickets.

But Tiwary's departure for twenty-seven saw another mini slide and Matthews fell for forty-eight. KKR eventually finished rather well on 140, given their horrendous start.

Chasing more than they would have liked to, Chennai's nerves were rattled early as Gayle had Matthew Hayden bowled off a vicious turner. But the nerves settled rather nicely once the seemingly fearless Suresh Raina joined the supremely confident Murali Vijay. And what followed next was an explosion of runs, the thunderous rapture ruining Ganguly and KKR's hopes.

Vijay struck a forty-ball fifty that included a couple of sixes. But Raina was the dominant force on the day, hammering seventy-eight runs off just thirty-nine balls, as many as eleven boundaries and three sixes accelerating Chennai's win with six and a half overs to spare to reach the second spot on the IPL 3 points table!

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