Fireworks in Sharjah fire Rajasthan to carve out a historic run chase

By K.R. Nayar

Kings XI Punjab did everything to win the match but Sanju Samson and a little known Rahul Tewatia turn the tables

It was nothing but fireworks on Sunday night at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium. Boom Boom went all the sixers and transformed the contest into a six-hitters match. Kings XI Punjab did everything possible to win the game but it was Rajasthan Royals that emerged the winners.  It is unimaginable that a team that posted a 183 -runs opening wicket partnership with their opener Mayank Agarwal cracking a century could end up as losers. This is why IPL is a tournament that fans enjoy watching and is the best among the T20 tournaments in the world.

Add to that, when the contest happens at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium, a venue known for producing spectacular and stunning results, IPL blossomed to its full glory. What was offered to the fans on Sunday night was one of the phenomenal run chases in T20 and the highest in the IPL history.  This is a venue that had once played a role in popularising the excitement in One Day cricket through Sachin Tendulkar’s Desert Storm knocks, and many more. Now the venue is doing the same in T20 through the IPL.  In the previous match there, between Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings, we saw the record for the highest numbers of sixes in the IPL history being equaled.  Fans are now eager to know what will be the next record that will be set there or broken in the coming matches.

Right till the first half of the match, everyone was convinced that Rajasthan skipper Steve Smith, by electing to bowl, had committed a blunder; but he proved otherwise and led the way to the target through a half-century. Sanju Samson backed his captain’s confidence in him and announced that he was determined to erase the tag of an 'inconsistent batsman' through sheer power hitting. It reached a stage where anything that touched his bat would go for a six. When Rahul Tewatia kept wasting deliveries without scoring runs, Smith was again blamed for sending out an inexperienced batsman up the order.

But then, in a flash Tewatia turned into a big hitter. He is another example of the enormous talent pool in Indian cricket. Did anyone imagine Tewatia, a little known cricketer, would be capable of hitting a world class bowler like Sheldon Cottrell for five sixes in an over?  By scoring 86 runs in the last five overs and going on to win the game, Rajasthan has silenced all those who doubted their victory chances, and forced the losing captain KL Rahul to remark: “That is T20 cricket.” 

No analysis of this match will be complete without mentioning Nicholas Pooran’s acrobatic fielding. We always laud fielders who convert two-run shots into singles and those who save boundaries, but Pooran converted a six into just two runs flying like a bird out of the boundary and throwing the ball in. Let us all join the legendary fielder Jonty Rhodes who got up from his seat to bow to Pooran.