Irfan Pathan and Yuvraj Singh managed 82 runs in the 10 overs they faced between them but the others batted poorly to score just 54 in the other 10. In the chase, even after a 65-run opening stand, the Chennai Super Kings batsmen contrived to be needing 10 runs off the last over. Fittingly for a match of low quality, the last over of the regulation game – bowled by Pathan and faced by Albie Morkel and Ravichandran Ashwin – read: edge for four, missed slog for two byes thanks to an overthrow, single, another edge for two, a missed waft, and a powerful, nervous hit straight to mid-off with one needed off the last ball.
Juan Theron, playing his first IPL match and Punjab’s bowling hero in the regulation time, bowled Hayden off the second ball in the Super Over, and despite a slogged six from Suresh Raina, once again 10 were needed in the last over. Muttiah Muralitharan was hit for a six first ball by Mahela Jayawardene, but he came back with a wicket and a dot to set the match up again. Yuvraj Singh chose that extremely nervous moment to execute a delicate reverse-sweep, a shot he hardly ever uses, to finish the game off with two balls to go.
By halftime, though, Murali, the second Sri Lankan spinner to bowl the losing Super Over in as many tied matches in IPL, wouldn’t have expected to play any further role in the game, let alone bowl the pressure over. In regulation time, he was the perfect spy, taking out two of the most prolific batsmen from his country, with 3 for 16 in his four overs. It wasn’t as if Chennai needed any extra-ordinary bowling effort: the Punjab batsmen were hapless again.
Pathan, promoted to open the innings, and Singh would have felt the rest of the team had turned on them. They got zero support from the other end, and the two batted together for only nine deliveries. There was a time when Pathan had scored 29 off 17 balls with five crunchy boundaries, but thanks to the struggling Ravi Bopara and Kumar Sangakkara, Punjab were 30 for 1 after five overs. Singh, too, scored 43 out of the 70 runs that came while he was at the crease. He got to face only 28 out of 64 deliveries bowled when in the middle.
Between those spells of ordinary cricket from Punjab, came Murali’s genius. In his first over, inside the Powerplay, he beat Sangakarra twice in the flight, but the real beauty came in his second. This time he didn’t bowl it flat when he saw Sangakkara charging down, just got it to dip more and then the bounce left him high and dry.
