Indian Premier League T20 Cricket: Second Leg Of The Tournament In UAE - Results from First 4 Matches

Hello Sports Lovers,

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Indian Premier League's Second leg at United Arab Emirates is off to a good start with 4 good matches completed as of yesterday with some changes in the points table with each win from the last 4 days.

Here I am sharing the details of teams' performances with their changed squads as we discussed in last 3 blogs.

Let's go with details from 4 completed matches.

First Match - Mumbai Indian vs Chennai Super Kings:

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The start of the tournament in UAE wasn't that great with Chennai winning the start and electing to bat First as they weren't sure of how the pitch may behave and also the thinking from Dhoni might be to avoid players getting tired in the evening heat at Dubai.

CSK started with 3 down for just 7 runs on the board as Faf Du Plessis, Moeen Ali returning back to pavilion without disturbing the scorers and even Suresh Raina returned back scoring just 4 runs.

In between, Ambati Rayudu faced a bouncer from Adam Milne and took it on his elbow to only retire hurt as he was in pain.

At that time, Dhoni's decision to bat First looked so wrong and people started thinking that, Mumbai finally will start with a win!!!!

But, that wasn't the case to be, as other opener for CSK, Ruturaj Gaikwad had other plans.

Gaikwad and captain MS Dhoni started the repair work without taking much risks and added 17 runs, but the poor strike rate by Dhoni means, they have to start taking some risks and Dhoni perished in upping the scoring rate when he was on 3 from 5 balls.

That brought in Ravindra Jadeja, the consistent scorer for CSK in First leg in India to the crease and him and Gaikwad had to start slowly as CSK needed to rebuild the scoring.

From 24 for 4, CSk slowly started building the innings with Gaikwad scoring few boundaries and sixes and Jadeja gave a good support to him to add 81 runs between them and that is when, Jadeja got out in quest of accelerating the score when he had scored 26 from 33 balls.

That brought Dwayne Bravo to the crease and there were those few moments to see vintage Bravo as he kept scoring 4's and 6's.

When Bravo was looking dangerous with 23 from 15 balls including 3 Sixes and a 4, he got out to Jasprit Bumrah but by that time, he and Gaikwad ensured CSK has good enough score with CSK corssing 140 mark and that was a good recovery after 3 down for 7!!!!

In the mean time, Ruturaj Gaikwad proved his selection with 88 runs from just 58 balls with 13 hits to the boundary including 4 Sixes.

In reply, Mumbai captained by Rohit Sharma Kieron Pollard as Rohit Sharma still recovering from injury sustained in England, started off with Anmolpreet Singh in Rohit's place as opener along with regular opener Quinton De Kock.

Both started well and Anmol was good in his brief stay scoring some good shots, but he couldn't last longer.

De Kock was the First to go for Mumbai for 17 from 11 balls and his intent was good in his brief stay.

There was a rare failure for Surya Kumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan and even captain Pollard couldn't score many.

When even Krunal Pandya got run out for paltry score, it was Saurabh Tiwari, a possible replacement for Hardik Pandya who get going with lower order, but his low strike rate means, Mumbai were always behind the asking rate and eventually fell short by 20 runs and that innings of 23 from just 8 balls by Dwayne Bravo was the difference in the end.

Second Match - Royal Challengers Bangalore vs Kolkata Knight Riders:

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RCB tried to follow in the foot steps of CSK by selecting to bat after winning the toss, but KKR's bowlers had different thing in the mind as Varun Chakravarthy, Andre Russell and co were brilliant and didn't allow the RCB batters to score freely.

RCB's captain was the First to go for 5 runs and even though Padikkal and debutante S Bharat did well to score some runs, Andre Russell had a decisive spell of medium pace bowling to take back to back wickets to remove Bharat and Ab De Villiers and no recovery for RCB after that as they folded out for 92 runs before even completing their quota of 20 overs.

KKR in response had a blazing start by seasoned opener Shubman Gill and debutante Venkatesh Iyer as both raised the score to 82 in 9 overs and it was an easy victory for them with improving their net run rate too.

KKR's win helped them to jump to Fifth position as their run rate improved by good amount.

Third Match: Rajasthan Royals vs Punjab Kings:

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If one has to learn how to lose a match from winning position, then they have to check Punjab Kings innings!!!!

PBKS were going good in response to the score set by RR, a score of 186 for a win thanks to the good scoring by Evin Lewis, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Mahipal Lomrar.

PBKS did start well with their usual Indian openers in KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal as they added yet another century partnership to their growing numbers and after that, even Nicholas Pooran, Aiden Markram were also brisk at scoring runs.

In the end, PBKS needed just 8 runs from 2 overs and they had Mustafizur Rahman and Kartik Tyagi to bowl those 2 overs and both did bowl awesomely giving away 4 and 1 run respectively!!!!

That was the best death bowling in IPL to defend just 8 runs and that when PBKS had 8 wickets in hand!!!!

There was a consolation for PBKS as their sensational young bowler Arshdeep Singh got 5 wickets from his quota of 4 overs although he was bit expensive.

Fourth match: Sun Risers Hyderabad vs Delhi Capitals:

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SRH seems to have continued from where they left off in India leg as they slumped to yet another defeat.

The final update in this blog is about the match between Sun Risers Hyderabad and Delhi Capitals happened yesterday at Dubai as well.

Winning the toss was the only consolation for SRH and they elected to bat First as they trusted their bowling to defend the score, but they couldn't set a par score for DC to chase.

Abdul Samad was the top scorer for SRH with 28 runs although there were starts by most of the SRH batters, but none could convert those into big scores and eventually finished their 20 overs with 134 runs on the board.

One would have thought SRH might be able to pull a win considering the depth in their bowling, but DC batters were good enough to score the required runs in 18 overs with top 4 batters doing the job for them.

Although Prithvi Shaw got out early, Shikhar Dhawan, Shreyas Iyer and captain Rishabh Pant ensured they cross the victory line comfortably.

The win gave DC First position in points table and the loss for SRH didn't make them any lower in points table as they are already on last position.

With those losses, SRH and PBKS might well have finished their race to the playoffs.

KKR, RR, MI and RCB might possibly fight for 2 of the 4 positions to play in playoffs and DC and CSK have almost ensured of the First 2 positions.

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There is still a long way to go in this tournament and there is a CoVid outbreak already in the First 4 days itself as SRH's T Natarajan tested positive and 6 of his team members are in isolation and that will be another setback for SRH and possibly for IPL as well if there are more cases in the next few days.

Let's hope that is not the case and enjoy the Cricket.

That's all guys in this blog, I will hopefully bring out another 4 matches in next 4 days or who knows may be earlier than that, as there are double headers over the weekend.

Until then, take care and keep blogging and watching Sports :)

Wishing the best to you all :)

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