Sachin Tendulkar

You may think Sachin Tendulkar might have achieved everything there is to achieve on the cricket field. But the man himself doesn’t seem to think so! Sachin flicked, swept, scooped and put the cricketing text book to shame with a couple of helicopter hits as he scored his first century in the shortest format of the game! There was no better place to achieve the feat – in front of his religious home crowd at the Wankhede, which erupted when the little Monster reached the three figure mark of the last ball of the innings. But neither Sachin nor the 30,000 odd people were celebrating at the end of the game as Brendon McCullum’s 60 ball 81 ensured that the Kochi Tuskers got off the mark in style!

Mahela Jayawardene won the toss and opted to bowl on the very ground that his century went in vain the last time he batted here in the World Cup final and though Davy Jacobs struggled to get bat to ball, Tendulkar was his usual self and continued from where he left off last game as Mumbai reached 57 of 8 overs. Jacobs’ misery ended when he was cleaned up by Raiphi Gomez but that brought in the dashing Ambati Rayudu. It didn’t take long for Rayudu to settle down as he launched Gomez for a couple of sixes in the eleventh over. Tendulkar reached his half century of 43 balls before joining the assault. The duo took Jadeja for 14 runs and then Powar went for 12 as Mumbai were 125/1 at the end of the fifteenth over. The last five overs was the Tendulkar show! It was a show of finesse combined with aggression which turned out to be a deadly combination. He flicked Vinay Kumar over the square leg boundary and then slogged a length ball over midwicket and brought the helicopter shot into play when the ball was even fuller. Rayudu brought up his half century but that went unnoticed as the Master approached his century. Ten runs of the last over ensured that Tendulkar checked off another item from his to-do list as Mumbai Indians ended up at 182/2, a daunting total surely for the team from the South!

Kochi had to get off to a good start if they had to have any chance of challenging Mumbai’s score. McCullum got a life of the very first ball and there was no looking back thereafter! He and Jayawardene, opening in place of the injured V.V.S Laxman, got off to a flier with the Kiwi keeper meting out special treatment to the Mumbai Indians’ strike bowler Malinga. Jayawardene then hit Pollard for a couple of boundaries as Kochi reached 50 at the end of the Powerplay. Murtaza and Harbhajan bowled a couple of tidy overs before Pollard was again taken for twelve runs and with 99 runs required of the last ten overs, Kochi suddenly realized they were in with a bright chance of winning this. Tendulkar went back to Malinga in the thirteenth over and he responded by bowling his Lankan counterpart with a gem of a yorker, but not before he had made a spectacular 56 of 36 balls and it was down to 54 to get of 36 balls. Pollard’s third over went for thirteen more runs and the match looked to be slipping out of Mumbai’s hands. Tendulkar threw in his last dice by handing over Malinga his last over and McCullum got bowled trying one shot too many. That brought in the dangerous Hodge who struck a couple of boundaries to bring it down to 19 of the last two overs. Ravindra Jadeja, batting at No.3, struck a boundary of Ali Murtaza and two huge hits over the midwicket sealed the game and brought Kochi Tuskers their first win as a franchise. McCullum was awarded the man of the match for his daredevilry while Mumbai paid the price for being over dependent on Malinga and slumped to their first loss of the season.

Tags: Cricket, Indian Premier League, IPL, IPL 2011, IPL 4, Mumbai Indians, Sachin Tendulkar