JOIN USChargers ride on Rohit heroics
Rohit Sharma scored a breezy 38 and then followed it up with four wickets, including a hat-trick to guide Deccan Chargers to a convincing 19-run victory over Mumbai Indians in their Indian Premier League match here on Wednesday.
Sharma shone with both the bat and ball, making a crucial 38 off 36 deliveries and then scalped four wickets giving away six runs in his two overs to bring back the Hyderabad outfit’s campaign back on track after three successive defeats.
With this victory, the Chargers’ have moved to the second position in the points table with nine points.
Chasing a modest target of 146, JP Duminy fought a lone battle and made a fighting 52 off 48 balls but that was not enough to see his side home as Mumbai Indians could manage only 126 for eight wickets in their 20 overs.
Earlier, opting to bat, Sharma struck a sensible 38, while Venugopal Rao chipped in with with a quickfire 28 to guide Deccan Chargers to a modest 145 for six.
The Mumbai Indians were dealt in with two early blows by Chargers’ left-arm pacer RP Singh (2/19), who claimed the crucial wickets of Sanath Jaysuriya and master blaster Sachin Tendulkar in his opening and innings second over.
Jayasuriya was the first to depart, brilliantly caught at third man by Ryan Harris. If that was not enough, Singh removed Tendulkar in his next ball, cleaning the master blaster with a deliver that came in after pitching to see the Mumbai outfit struggle at 7 for two.
But South African batting sensation Duminy and wicket-keeper batsman Pinal Shah were in no mood to be bogged down by the early dismissals as the duo launched a massive counter attack to take their side out of trouble.
Duminy was the initiator with two fours of Singh’s second over and then Shah sent Dwayne Smith twice over the fence to race Mumbai Indians’ score to 50 for 2 after seven overs. But Shah’s 19-ball 29-run cameo was finally halted by off-spinner T Suman (2/14), caught by Smith at long-on, thereby ending his 42-ball 53-run fourth wicket stand with Duminy.
Insensible batting
From there on, Duminy started to take up the responsibility and played cautiously with occasional hits to the fence. The left-hander stitched another run-a-ball 37-run partnership with Dwayne Bravo (13) to bring Mumbai closer to victory.
But some insensible batting from the Mumbai Indians and Sharma’s sensational two overs spell twisted the game in Chargers’ favour. Needing 49 off 36 balls, Bravo went for a biggie over long-off off Suman only to find Harris, who took a well judged catch.
Then came Sharma, who single-handedly changed the fate of the match picking up four wickets, including his first hat-trick to seal the match in Chargers’ favour. Sharma clean bowled Abhishek Nayar and Harbhajan Singh in last two balls of the 16th over and then completed his hat-trick, picking up the prized wicket of Duminy, caught by Adam Gilchrist in the first ball of the 18th over.
Sharma added another to his tally when Saurabh Tiwary was stumped by Gilchrist.
Earlier, opting to bat, the Chargers’ made a wobbly start to their innings for the third time in a row as they struggled to score runs from the very beginning. Skipper Gilchrist (25 off 29) was not as his usual best and preferred to play the role of a sheet anchor, while Suman (20) showed aggression from the word go, hitting Harbhajan out of the park twice in his opening over to manage 15 runs of the fifth over. However, Suman’s over aggression finally did him in when he nicked one to Shah off Bravo (1/16) in the next over.
But still there was no respite for Harbhajan as after Suman’s dismissal, Gilchrist decided to cut loose and struck the off-spinner for a massive six over square-leg. Just when it seemed Gilchrist and Sharma started to provide some momentum to the Chargers’ innings with occasional boundaries to give Chargers respectable total.