Saturday, April 19, 2008

Black and Blue

The IPL is here and the Kolkata Knight Riders have smashed the Bangalore Royal Challengers to smithreens - not much of a challenge given that the Black and Gold turned the challengers black and blue... What fireworks for the opening, showcase game from Kolkata - Shahrukh khan must be proud. In the end Kolkata scored 223/3 and Bangalore started poorly, falling behind by 140 runs.

Brendan McCullum, what an innings! I saw the brief highlights at this link on Youtube... as the commentators are very right in saying that his whole innings looks like a highlights reel while others fell around him.



In terms of the match itself, it did live up to the excitement - we got a record total score in 20/20 and a record individual score as well of 158 not out from McCullum. In fact he ended up carrying the bat. This is a good example of good captaincy and great use of the resources at hand by Kolkata.

Sam, one of our regular visitors has left some good analysis in the form of comments... once again great comments. here is what he had to say:

SRK’s Kolkata Knight Riders have defeated Malia’s Royal Challengers by 140 runs,it was expected that the KKR’s will prevail over RC’s but nobody predicted or expected such a rout, Brendon Mccullum decimated the RC attack by a highly entertaining knock of 158 off just 73 balls,it was said by many pundits that Vijay Mallya has paid too much to Kallis and Zaheer, his batting line up is not suitable for a T20 match even the batting order was not right,in my opinion Boucher or Cameroon White should have opened with Jaffer, their batting will get a boost when Misbah will join them and their bowling line up will cetainly get boosted when Steyn,Bracken and Abdur Razzazk will join them, but lack of fire power in their batting lineup will still remain a major concern for them.

Kolkata is well balanced but if they don’t get Shoaib it might hurt them in the long run


Did you watch the game and are you planning on watching the upcoming ones? Who are you supporting? Please weight in with your comments

Make your pitch on this post...



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7 Pitched:

  1. Pontings_baldspot said...
     

    SRK is Mark Cuban on speed. The guy was uncontrollable.. the sexual tension between Ponting and Ganguly was pretty evident in that awkward hug after Zaheer Khan's wicket..Bangalore might have sucked today but I still think they'll end up higher than Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai

  2. straight point said...
     

    i think dravid, kallis and jaffer will end making fool of themselves...

    specially jaffer...he was embracingly miserable yesterday...just could not pt bat on ball...against same bowlers he practices in nets...

  3. Anonymous said...
     

    I watched it and it was a shame that the contest was over before the fielding restrictions were lifted in the second innings.

    Kolkata look a good team but Bangalore were terrible and showed us nothing but ineptitude, Praveen Kumar exempted.

    http://nestaquin.wordpress.com

  4. Anonymous said...
     

    Once Steyn ,Bracken and Misbah will join Challengers I don't think any team will be able to humiliate them like the last game,they will be able to defend low scores,and since not many teams will be able to score freely against them their lack of fire power in the batting line up will not be felt.

    This team has been formed with a defensive frame of mind which is not bad always, take an example of Pistons and Spurs they are the most consistent basket ball teams in NBA just because they have a defensive mindset.

  5. Anonymous said...
     

    Obaid

    Thanks for mentioning my post in your main thread.

  6. Q said...
     

    PB - I enjoyed that sexual tension.

    SP - I've been saying since the auctions that Bangalore chose a test batting line up.

    Sam - I agree Misbah will strengthen their team, but 1 man can't be enough. With Steyn and Bracken though, I think they will have the best opening bowling pair on the show.

    Since the auctions the Knight Riders has been my team. And they showed exactl why yesterday.

  7. Obaid said...
     

    I dont think Ganguly and Ponting will end up hugging less awkwardly ever :) I'd like to see a Symmonds and Habrbhajan hug as well

    @SP, good point, but what do you make of the recent Chandarpaul transformation. I can see Kallis possibly making that 20/20 adaptation but not sure about the others. I agree about Dravid (he shouldnt even be playing 20/20 bc he is in a different class) and Jaffer (mismatch + poor recent form?)

    @Nestaquin, atleast you didnt have to go through the pain of a 50 over match as we did in the recent Bangladesh vs Pakistan games... add 3 power outages and it makes things torturous. Maybe short and painless is another great 20/20 characteristic?

    @Sam, always a pleasure. Your great insight in the comments section is consistently better than what we write ourselves. You should be blogging somewhere too!

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