As Harsha Bhogle aptly conveyed the message: ‘The magnificent campaign of Mumbai and Sachin Tendulkar in IPL 2010 has come to an end.’
Without doubt, CSK were the superlative team of the day and fought back in to the tournament to take the title home. For me, the star for Chennai was Suresh Raina. He played a fantastic innings in front of a packed Navi Mumbai stadium to take the game away from Mumbai. His innings had the character and aggressiveness that was required to win a final and he came up trumps when required. I still maintain that the 2 dropped catches were way too expensive for MI and they paid the price for it. As Harsha concurrently commented: ‘There is no you in the game, it’s always me.‘ I couldn’t agree more. But I am not taking anything away from CSK and Raina, you were outstanding and deserved to take the IPL 2010 home. ‘Catches Win Matches’ is an old yet the most important chapter in Cricket’s manual and Mumbai missed to scan through those pages today.
I do feel that MI made some critical mistakes at crucial junctures to let the game away. The 2 dropped catches and the uninspiring performance at the field was a big let down. The fact that the last 5 overs yielded more than 70 runs narrates the entire story. I strongly feel that bringing in Bhajji during such encounters would be a futile effort and Pollard should have come in before Duminy. Pollard played a blinder but it was a bit too late for Mumbai to go past that total of Chennai. Coming in to the final as the most prolific team in the competition under the leadership of my ‘Guru’, Mumbai faltered in the final hurdle as few tactics went the other way.
Needless to say, I would not like to curb the feeling to express the obvious fact that I expected my ‘Boss’ to take Mumbai to glory but I have always maintained that it’s the team that wins at the end and individuals are merely enacting a performance for the bigger platform of the game. Even if it is the ‘Lord of Cricket – Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar’. He played a very responsible and sedate innings but as always, there was too much pressure on him and even though he held the innings together, probably today was not to be his. But for dominating this format of the game and catapulting Mumbai to the finals, I salute him. Yet again.
I have always been impressed with MSD’s captaincy and today he stamped his authority all over this thrilling game. His decisions were crisp and effective. But the most important move to have Hayden in the mid off which was so damn straight has instigated me to applaud the captain! Well done Dhoni and a huge pat on the back for CSK!!
In all, a final that we all have always dreamt of!!! A great game of cricket to round off the proceedings at the IPL 2010.
@Lifeoholic 