IPL Kolkata Knight innings highlights

Looks like there is life after Adam Gilchrist. Brendon McCullum plundered a staggering, unbeaten 158 (10 fours, 13 sixes) as Kolkata Knight Riders drubbed the Bangalore Royal Challengers by 140 runs to clinch the inaugural match of the DLF Indian Premier League at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Friday.


It was the kind of innings that made the contest one-sided, lopsided. But it was a day when cricket celebrated batting savagery of the finest kind.


Bangalore were never in the reckoning. Chasing an improbable 222 after putting Kolkata in they were bundled out for 82.


The hosts opened with Rahul Dravid and Wasim Jaffer, the pair least likely to get them off to a flier. Soon enough the skipper (Dravid) was back in the dugout, cleaned up by Ishant Sharma.


It was full; and it had pace and sting. But these attributes do not necessarily get you Dravid. Today he succumbed to the sinking feeling of 222.


Virat Kohli perished next, inside-edging Ashok Dinda. Wallowing under the weight of the number, Bangalore missed out on delicious scoring opportunities. In trying to hit too hard they failed to make a capital out of the loose deliveries.


Soon enough followed the procession of wickets. Ajit Agarkar snared Jacques Kallis; Sourav Ganguly had Mark Boucher. And after pottering away for a 15-ball six Jaffer relieved both himself and the team, edging Dinda to Ricky Ponting at slip.


In fact the score sheet looked like a local telephone number; not a single batsman in the top-order could manage double digits. Praveen Kumar struck a few lusty blows towards the end to stay unbeaten on 18.


How much McCullum dictated the course of the game could be gauged from the fact that the next highest score was 20. (McCullum belted more than 70 per cent of the runs).


There were some nerves in the beginning, alright. Praveen Kumar, who opened the attack, exploited the freshness of the turf and got the ball to jag back cramping McCullum for space.


It was the second over that lit up the evening. Determined to get on with it McCullum made mincemeat of Zaheer Khan, playing his first game after a long layoff.

Shuffling just a little he clouted Zaheer for 18 runs (4,4,6,4) between mid-wicket and deep forward square-leg.


The six was a parody though—an intended flick to square-leg that soared over third man.


Sourav Ganguly, after scratching around initially, got off the blocks with a top-edged pull off Ashley Noffke. The Queensland quickie too found himself on a burning deck as McCullum continued the blast of sixes with a pull over square-leg and a straight hit over mid-off.


With the score reading 61, Bangalore drew first blood. Once again Ganguly found the death lap of his old nemesis. Zaheer, who has had the better of him in their recent exchanges, had his man edging to Kallis at slip.


With McCullum pulverising the attack with disdain, Ricky Ponting needn’t have smashed the stuffing out of the ball. The total swelled to 73 in eight overs, 87 in ten.


Ponting however failed to hit the straps as well he would have liked although there was his signature shot in between—a quick-arm pull off the front foot.


Ponting’s dismissal for 20 (failing to clear mid-off) didn’t in the least check the glut of boundaries. McCullum, now seeing the ball like an air balloon, went berserk racing to his hundred.


On view was everything on his menu—the pulls, the delicate scoops—as the boundaries grew both in number and distance.


He clouted three sixes off Kumar in the last over notching up his 150 in the process. How Dravid missed Anil Kumble’s influence in the middle-overs.


Rameez Raja best summed up the knock: “No way to describe it. All the adjectives would lose their gloss.”


Teams:


Bangalore: Wasim Jaffer, Jacques Kallis, Rahul Dravid (capt), Virat Kohli, Cameron White, B Akhil, Mark Boucher (wk), Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, Ashley Noffke, Sunil Joshi


Kolkata: Brendon McCullum (wk), Sourav Ganguly (capt), Ricky Ponting, David Hussey, Debabrata Das, Mohammad Hafeez, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Ajit Agarkar, Murali Kartik, Ishant Sharma, Wriddhiman Saha