Kings XI Punjab gripped their confidence and spirit for the semi final as they thrashed out Hyderabad Deccan Chargers by six wickets at the Punjab Cricket stadium, Mohali. Chasing a formidable target of 176 runs the KingsXI displayed some excellent batting performance with bringing the fastest fifty of the tourney with in 3.5 overs. Sangakkara’s cameo fifty of just 25 balls, the 2nd fastest of IPL, coupled with aggressive batting of Marsh lift the score board to 84 in just 7.4 overs. Marsh scored 60 of 46 balls.
Yuvraj and Pomersbach sent back to pavilion cheaply while Jayawadhane and Piyush Chawla put the finishing touch to beat the chargers in the last over of the game. For Deccan Chargers Ojha grasped 2 wickets while Styris and Rohit Sharma shared 1 wicket each.
Earlier The Deccan chargers had got a firm start as both the openers Adam Gilchrist and Gibbs seemed to be in good touch today and added 79 runs in the 1st wicket stand before Gibbs departed in the 1st ball of the 11th over.
In the first 5 overs Deccan chargers were looking to be much comfortable, but the introduction of spin by Yuvraj in the 6th over ceased the run rate of Hyderabad. Both the spinners Power and Chawla bound the Hyderabad batsmen. The Partnership was broken by Gagandeep Singh who bowled out Gibbs(44 of 34 balls) while Gilchrist left the pitch with 50 runs of individual score after getting bowled in power’s powerful delivery.
The deccan chargers had not really charged up as far as run rate was concerned even though they had not lost more wickets. Then it was again Rohit Sharma who lifted the scoring rate of the Chargers with firing 50 of just 27 balls that helped Hyderabad to get a competitive total of 175 runs what they got with sparing just 4 wickets.
Sreesanth, Chawla, VRV Singh and Power all shared one wicket each while Power was the pick amongst all with excellent figures of costing just 20 runs in his 4 overs
source : www.odishatoday.com
