IPL 6 - RCB vs PWI: Heroes of the Day

Madness and mayhem make for a very heady combination. Throw in the IPL and you have a lethal cocktail of entertainment & chaos. That’s what happened at the Chinnaswamy Stadium today. To some, it felt like a flashback to IPL 2008, where carnage of a similar nature occurred, though not with the same intensity as this one. I don’t know what I was watching – a T20 game or the 2003 World Cup final.

Here are the Heroes for the Day:

Chris Gayle (175 n.o. off 66 balls; 13 fours, 17 sixes; 1-0-5-2)

I really considered putting in some stuff about this guy alone. First off, he doesn’t use a bat; it’s more of a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Second, his idea of carnage is methodically depositing every other delivery into the stands, if not out of the park. People coin the term “Gayle Storm” every time the big Jamaican bludgeons his way to a scintillating knock – well, it was more than a storm the Warriors were caught in today. In the process, the ever-smiling opener broke Brendon McCullum’s 6-year record for the highest individual score and the maximum sixes in a single innings. To top it all off, he bowled the last over of Pune’s innings, and picked up 2 wickets for 5 runs, thus completing a comprehensive victory. Virat Kohli would actually be delighted to hand over the Orange Cap to his fellow teammate!

AB de Villiers (31 runs off 8 balls; 3 fours, 3 sixes; 1 catch)

“Murderous” is the only way to describe the blinding cameo played by the South African dasher. His reasoning -“Why should Gayle have all the fun?” – was absolutely clear. Wasting no time, de Villiers smashed the hapless Ashok Dinda for a four and a six to begin with, then scored another boundary off a disciplined Bhuvneshwar Kumar before ripping into seamer Mitchell Marsh (4-6-6 was the sequence) to push his side past the 250-run mark. Although the Aussie all-rounder had the last laugh by having him caught just as he was beginning to cut loose, Abraham Benjamin de Villiers played his part to perfection.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar (4-0-23-0)

The young UP seamer has just earned himself a new fan in me. On a track where the marauding Gayle took the entire bowling to the cleaners, Kumar mixed up his deliveries very well. His initial spell read 3-0-8-0, before de Villiers and Gayle both corrected that blemish by tonking 15 runs off his final over. For all his efforts, Kumar couldn’t bag any wickets, but he did enough to restrict RCB to a total less than 300 (no jokes- it was a certainty at one stage).

Ashok Dinda (4-0-48-2)

This guy’s had a luckless IPL so far. He was belted for 63 runs in one game, and here he conceded 48 off his 4 overs; there’s not much you can do with a rampaging Gayle around. But there was a difference – this time around, the Bengal pacer picked up the wickets of Saurabh Tiwary and Ravi Rampaul. He needs to learn to keep his cool at the death; full tosses are not the way to go.

Steven Smith (41 runs off 31 balls; 6 fours)

Steven Smith hasn’t quite fired after his exploits against the Chennai Super Kings. Faced with a mountain of runs and with 4 wickets down, he tried his hardest to bring some respectability to the Pune total. He added 58 runs with fellow Aussie Mitchell Marsh before the pressure of accelerating the run rate lured him into giving away his wicket – not that the Warriors were ever in the chase anyway.

Mitchell Marsh (3-0-56-1; 2 catches; 24 runs off 23 balls; 2 sixes)

Marsh has been a consistent performer for his side this season. He would want to forget this game quickly – hammered all over the park by de Villiers and Gayle, he nevertheless managed to prise out the former towards the end of RCB’s innings. Coming in with Pune 4 down, he played two big shots, but was unsuccessful in picking up the scoring rate. He is still a key player for the side and needs to be handled very carefully by the think-tank.

A clinical performance was dished out today by RCB, to say the least. It has been one hell of a game we witnessed today, with many records tumbling. If they sustain the momentum, that elusive IPL title might just be making its way to Namma Bengaluru this year!