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HPL T-20 Game 1: Sloggers Vs Underdog Billionaires

What a game! This one swung more times than a pendulum would in an day. Both teams seeme

d to have the game wrapped up at different stages. The game had its own mind and ended up being the first tie in the history of this tournament. The sloggers won the toss and put the Billionaires in. The teams looked pretty balanced with sid and doc playing for the Billionaires and Danny (from Maui) and Yudi playing for the Sloggers as pool players. The Billionaires gambled a bit sending in Ragu in to open the batting with Doc. Travis pulled a Crowe and had Danny open the bowling with Barry. Unfortunately, the Billionaires move misfired and Ragu got bowled without causing much damage. Sid walked in at 3 and along with Doc raced away to pretty good start. Doc was in great form and scored a bunch of runs with his favorite pull shot. He quickly reached the retiring score of 30. Sid got going but fell to a brilliant piece of fielding from Barry. Sid moved back and across to a ball from Subbu and tried to glance it fine. Barry anticipated the shot and started moving to his left and took a great diving catch to get rid of Sid. The Sloggers got a few quick wickets to get back in the game but then gave away too many extras (40+) to hand over the advantage. Interestingly, Travis held himself back till the 18th over. It could be a tactic to bring in more unpredictable bowlers but I believe that he under uses himself when captaining a side; especially as a bowler. Some lusty blows and caressing drives from BigO, Rambo and others kept the Billionaires in the game with a decent run rate. Fall of the last wicket brought Doc back but they lost his wicket to an ill timed run out in the last over to gift a bonus point to the Sloggers and missed a point themselves by falling 4 runs short of 150.

Underdog Billionaires: 146 All out in 20 overs

The Sloggers innings started with Danny and Travis firing away. All eyes were on Ragu to see if he starts his spell without any extras (which he managed to do) but it was Danny who stole the show. He made his intentions clear with an astounding flick over the mid-wicket boundary off Ragu. That pretty much set the tone for his innings. Out of the many shots he played a couple of flicks were unforgettable; a little thing being that the ball was chest high and at a more than brisk pace with him walking down the track. I've seen pull shot being played in that fashion; not flicks. Travis soon joined the carnage and played a couple of his trademark pulls. One of them, a half pull half sweep should've been scored as a dozen. They both retired pretty comfortable at 30 each and were set to take over the match with about 85 runs in the first 10 overs. Surprisingly, the Billionaires did not panick. Though they did not get many wickets they knew they still had a few overs from their top bowlers. Between Sid, Ragu and Kamran, they still had about 8 overs and bowled brilliantly to suffocate the batsmen. Yours truly had the pleasure of witnessing Ragu's ridiculous pace from square leg (as an umpire). Sid maintained the same pressure from his end choking the batsmen. I think Travis missed a trick in not sending Vishan up the order but the way Ragu and Sid bowled, I am not sure many could've scored. Even Pankaj bhai was tied down without many scoring opportunities. One crucial over from Kamran in the wee end released some pressure off the batsmen with a few wides and some misfielding but Sid tightened the noose back and gave away just a run from his last over to set a target of 11 from 12 balls. Kamran bowled a very good over to concede just 3 runs and the tally reached to a tricky 8 off 6 balls. The skipper brought himself on for the last over and promptly got a wicket of the first ball. The game looked out of reach for the Sloggers with a few dot balls following that. Raghu almost always bowls around the off stump and sometimes tries too hard to keep it there. This tendency cost him dearly today as he bowled a couple of crucial wides bringing the tally down to 4 off the last ball. Shabbir was on strike and did not connect too well till then. He went for an extravagant drive and the ball saw a fair bit of his bat's outer edge finding the gap between gully and third man. Two runs were a possibility but a fumble at the keepers end made sure the batsmen completed their game tieing third run.

This was an exciting game all the way with some clean hitting and beautiful bowling from both teams. I am sure there were many more lovely moments during this game that I missed in this blog. Though each team could think they clearly should've won the game, it would only do them good if they realize they both looked out of the game at some point and played some really good cricket to get back in and managed not loose.

Watch this space for the preview of the next game: Underdog Billionaires Vs Royal Lions