It was a must win situation for Bangalore Royal Challengers in their encounter with Chennai Super Kings to keep themselves alive in the IPL 2009. For Chennai also the match was crucial to sustain at their second position but they had a king collapse which saw them shrinking to 129 all out in 19.3 overs from a comfortable stand of 101/3 in 13 overs. The fall of Hayden made the wheel stuck for them and the dish on the menu cards was almost the same for Bangalore too with Morkel mincing the down the top order of Royal Challengers. But in form Taylor and aggressive Kohli paved the way to the victory stand and Praveen snatched the thriller at the end.

Dhoni would not have foreseen the possibility of a terrible collapse of his renowned batting line up while electing to bat first. With Hayden humbling the bowlers the score soared high in the early overs. Vijay and Raina could not stand for long and with Dhoni, Hayden started to play for a big innings. They were nothing short of constructing a challenging total with the score reaching 90s in 12 overs. The next over made the difference with Merve diving all the way to his right to scalp a return catch from Dhoni. After 13 overs the score read 101/3. Bangalore captain came out to bowl as bold as he had been while opening the over for his side. He was a class apart conceding only 4 runs off the first over and on his second spell he became more dangerous and re wrote the script of the match by scalping Hayden for 60 off 38 balls.

That was the beginning of the Kings turmoil with them waiting for 5 prolonged overs then to find a boundary and the run rate dipped alarmingly below 3 runs. Kumble conceding just 12 off 4 overs with 2 wickets led a dream spell by Bangalore bowlers to shrink Chennai to 129 all out in 19.4 overs. Kallis who succeeded in breaking the showering of runs early with a wicket maiden over also stood out with the figures of 4overs, 18 for 2.

Chasing a moderate target was made difficult by Morkel who enjoyed two early scalps and with S Tyagi also joining him the opening spell found the top order of Bangalore like Kallis, Dravid and Uthappa back for just 30 runs. Kohli and Taylor were determined to go far ahead and they did little look for big hits and rather played for singles and waited to get the odd loose balls to keep the run rate ticking ahead. They surged ahead in almost run-a-ball passion and that was enough when you have a reckonable target to chase. The duo built a 56 runs stand before Kohli was caught by Oram off Balaji for 38. Kohli dared to heave Murali for a four and six when the run rate was dipping alarmingly and his 38 off 35 kept the required run rate steady under 7.

With Taylor occupying the crease, the fall of the tail end was of no concern for Bangalore and the last two overs found them needing 17 runs. Praveen Kumar eased the tension by top edging Balaji for a third man six and that over went for 12 runs. Oram came to bowl the last over with the target remaining 5 runs. A first ball wicket of Taylor for 46 excited Chennai fans but an irresponsible fielding from Raina made Dhoni gesturing in disbelief as it enabled Bangalore to extract two runs and lastly Praveen managed to strike past the fielders for a four to reach the score of 132 for 8/ fetching the much needed win for his side. Dhoni would surely be upset thinking about the four byes which had gone kissing his pads in the 18th over bowled by Oram that made the equation easy for Bangalore.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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