Mumbai Indians Survive Brutal Pathan Assault

The Indian Premier League's sponsors and marketers got just what they were hoping for in the contest between the Mumbai Indians and the Rajasthan Royals: a great cricket match. It is performances like these that the IPL is hoping to cash in on in order to build the sport's popularity.

Mumbai won the toss and batted first and got to a healthy 212, courtesy a good start and some wonderful middle-order batting.

The Mumbai Indians dominated the match for the first 27 overs and had the Royals down at 43 for 3, which soon became 66 for 4 in 9.2 overs when Paras Dogra joined Yusuf Pathan.

At the end of 10 overs the Royals were 69 for 4 and needed 144 runs in 60 balls. Pathan was 15 in 13 balls with a six and Dogra was 2 in 2.

This left the Royals in a situation where the best advice a captain can offer would be the old adage to knock the daylights out of the bowling attack without losing your wicket, and Pathan got the message. He managed to play himself in before he stopped to steal and began the heist with three consecutive sixes off Murtaza.

Dogra then brought Pathan back on strike with a single, and Pathan made it 6446Wd4, 26 off Sathish. Then it was McLaren, and again Dogra pinched a single and Pathan went 44Wd4Wd11; 17 in the over. Three overs leaked 62 runs and the match was alive with 82 needed off 42 balls.

The match then settled into some sense of sanity as Tendulkar brought his two main weapons in for an over each. 

The captain was missing the magic of Harbhajan Singh, who suffered a blow to his inner thigh while batting, but Malinga and Khan gave seven and five runs respectively to restore order. Then Murtaza went for 11 in the 16th over of the innings, leaving the Royals with 59 to get in 24 balls.

Tendulkar needed two overs before he could go back to Zaheer and Malinga, and with Pathan on 83 in 33 balls and Dogra on a boundary-less but calm 16 in 18 balls, he picked the hard-to-get-under Jayasuriya.

The first three balls seemed to justify the decision with only three singles to show, and then Pathan launched into Jayasuriya and hit him for two massive sixes either side of a four—100 in 37 balls and Royals needing 40 in 18 balls.

Sathish, with a reputation of being India’s best fielder, did a remarkable job at the non-striker’s end when he fielded and flicked Dogra’s drive to find Pathan short of the crease. That was when Dogra took over and the next five balls went 6, 6, 4, 4, and a single to keep strike.

The way the match had gone 19 off 12 balls should have been an easy task, but that is the value that quality bowlers bring to the table.

Zaheer went for seven despite a first ball wide and Malinga was phenomenal. Malinga bowled a brilliant yorker first up and then ran to pick the ball diving full stretch to shatter the stumps at the striker’s end; Dogra gone. The next man in was bowled and the buffer was more than enough for the brilliant Malinga to see Mumbai through.

It was a brilliant hundred by Pathan; chanceless, clean, and brutal along with some deft strokes in a tough situation. But I'll still take Dravid, Ponting, Tendulkar, Gambhir, Sehwag, Jesse Ryder, Hussey, Jayawardene, Sangakarra, Kallis, Duminy, and Clarke against a good Test attack or a recording of the double hundred that Sir Gary Sobers got against the rest of the world any day.

This is not to take away from the super effort of Pathan but this wasn’t even remotely close to the dozens of 50s that I’ve seen in tougher situations leave apart the many hundreds and the double and triple ones.

Players of the sub-continent are considered to be good against spin and Indian wickets traditionally are suited for spin bowling and if Shane Warne wants to understand what I mean then he has to see that he never got a five-wicket haul in an innings against India in India till 2004 in Chennai. He took 6 for 125 in 42.3 overs in India’s first innings of 376 and it was a tantalising contest where rain on the fifth day was the winner and the match a draw.

In the last match of the same series in Mumbai, Michael Clarke took 6 for 9 in 6.2 overs in India’s second innings and still ended up on the losing side. Warne could never manage to bowl Australia to victory against India. He chipped in but he was never the one man responsible and here also Michael Clarke beats him. In 2008 in Sydney when the shadows were lengthening and it seemed that India would hang on for a draw with just about 10 minutes of play left and three wickets in hand, Michael Clarke took three wickets in five balls with his left-arm spin.

Does it mean that Clarke is a great spinner or does it mean that he’s had a couple of lucky days? Can Clarke be compared to the Wizard of Oz? As a spinner, Clarke would probably not make it to a good club’s playing XI while Warne would be a serious contender to a four-man bowling attack picked out of over a hundred years of Test cricket.      

The T20 lesson: Enjoy the fun but don't lose your perspective mate.