Dharamsala: Mumbai Indians had hard time at Dharamsala as they were defeated by Kings XI Punjab by 50 runs. It was some brilliant bowling from the pace attack of Praveen Kumar, Sandeep Sharma and Azhar Mahmood which was tinged with the quicker ones from Piyush Chawla that pulled the match in their favour.
Earlier it was some terrific batting from Shaun marsh and Azhar Mahmood who added 148 runs to make sure that Kings XI pile on 184 in their 20 overs. Mahmood scored 80 runs off 44 balls whereas Marsh smacked 63 runs off 47 balls.
Mumbai lost their first wicket in Glenn Maxwell in the first over bowled by Praveen Kumar but Aditya Tare brought them back with a brilliant counter-attack as he smacked two fours and as many sixes. He departed after scoring 22 runs off just 12 balls that he faced.
Rayudu started off slowly but did compensate it well by scoring some boundaries and added 35 runs for the third wicket with Rohit Sharma. He contributed 26 runs off the 23 balls that he faced. Piyush Chawla picked up two wickets in quick succession as he got Dinesh Karthik out for a duck and followed it by taking the wicket Rohit Sharma, who departed after scoring 25 runs.
Keiron Pollard tried his level best but failed to fire and got out after scoring 22 runs off 21 balls. Azhar Mahmood took couple of wickets in the end but the man of the moment was Adam Gilchrist who picked up the wicket of Harbhajan Singh off his first and last ball of the Indian Premier League. Punjab won the match by 50 runs as they restricted Mumbai to 133 runs.
Earlier, Kings XI Punjab had a poor start as they lost the wickets of Adam Gilchrist and Mandeep Singh in quick successions and were reduced to 2/11 after two overs.
But Marsh started to free his arms as he smacked boundaries quite consistently in every over that he played. He smashed three back-to-back boundaries in 6th over which shifted the momentum and to compliment him Mahmood started hitting the ball quite brilliantly. After scoring 80 runs in the first 10 overs of the innings, Punjab were looking to setup the big target.
Mahmood and Marsh continued their counter-attack going and smacked each and every bowler. They added 148 runs which turned the tables in Punjab’s favour. Marsh departed after scoring 63 runs whereas Mahmood was out after scoring 80 runs.
Vohra played a nice little cameo of 20 runs off 8 balls to take his team to a mammoth total of 184 for the loss of eight wickets. Kings XI Punjab smacked 24 fours and five sixes in their innings.
Lasith Malinga ended up picking three wickets for 39 runs in his four overs.
By ISN