Bottoms up as RC enter final

It’s bottoms up. The IPL II has turned Season I  on its head. The two bottom-placed teams of last year will contest in the final. Royal Challengers Bangalore, seventh in the last edition, have set up the title clash with Deccan Chargers, last year’s wooden spoons. That’s no discredit to the teams, both are deserving finalists.

At the Wanderers here on Saturday night, RCB performed a clinical demolition of favourites Chennai Super Kings with a six-wicket win, with Manish Pandey emerging the match-winner. The young Karnataka batsman followed up his breathtaking century in the last match with a calculated 48 in the second semifinal. If only he had played more than three matches in the league stages, Manish would have run Rohit Sharma close for the best under-23 player of the league award.

Manish unleashed a flurry of boundaries in the power play, most of them coming through the off-side. Most of his shots bore the stamp of class. A couple of them, through the point region, would have made Rahul Dravid proud.

Dravid was there in the middle to provide direction during the chase. He put on a crucial 72 runs for the third wicket with Manish. Dravid made a 39-ball 44. Virat Kohli and Ross Taylor provided the late charge for the Challengers after some mesmerising bowling from Muttiah Muralitharan. Bangalore won by six wickets.

Earlier, the Chennai innings was quite uneventful after an initial burst from Matthew Hayden and Parthiv Patel. Once the openers departed in quick succesion, there was nothing super about the Kings. The Bangalore bowlers kept Chennai on a tight leash. Jacques Kallis, Anil Kumble, Roellof van der Merwe and Praveen Kumar were at their best.

Van der Merwe, the South African left-arm spinner, was imaginative, keeping the batsmen guessing with his variations in length.

A victim of his deception was Chennai skipper MS Dhoni himself, who looked rather intent and content in rotating the strike rather than on clearing fence.

The only time Dhoni made an effort to clear the fence, he perished. Vinay Kumar pulled off a stunner on the boundary line to dismiss the skipepr. Some credit is due to van der Merwe too. Dhoni, who promoted himself to No.3, could not manage a single boundary. In fact, there were very little fireworks in the Chennai innings.

Chennai’s 100 came in 13.2 overs. In the next seven overs they couldn’t score even 50 runs. In the semifinal of a T20 competition, that is snail’s pace.