Gayle storm blows away Punjab
BANGALORE: The towering inferno reduced everything to nothing. Gayle storm it was while exploding with the bat. Gayle force it was when entrusted to roll his arm over. A century, his second in this edition and a 3 for 21 figures saw Chris Gayle lead Royal Challengers to a 85-run victory over a hapless Kings XI Punjab in IPL IV T20 cricket at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Friday.
RCB coasted to an imposing 204 for 6 in 20 overs while Kings XI struggled to reach 120 for 9 to lose by a huge margin. In fact, Praveen Kumar cut loose on Abhiman'yu Mithun in the final over taking two fours and six to reduce the margin of defeat.
The West Indian cut loose with 10 fours and nine sixers like never before to reduce the Kings to less than mere mortals as the Bangalore te'am blazed away to glory yet again at home.
RCB now take the fourth spot with 11 points from nine outings and are inching closer to a berth in the play-offs. Punjab, six points from eight games now will have to do something remarkable to progress to the play-offs.
The only possible option Kings XI skipper Adam Gilchrist had to cut off those aerial shots was to perhaps have someone perched on the roving spidercam.
Yet, Gayle might have cha'nged the latitudes of his aer'ial route and zoomed away to glory. He did that no doubt with a masterly display of power-packed hitting. And as mentioned, it could not have got any better than this. A brilliant knock of 107 off a mere 48 balls saw the big man enable RCB post 204 for 6 in 20 overs.
No attack caused him any anxiety. No bowler troubled, let alone intimidated him. Ryan Harris bowled a maiden over to Gayle and that se'emed to have provoked him like nothing else. No sooner he faced Harris in the next over, Gayle hoisted him clean over long off. The next went soaring over long on for variety or crowd pleasure and the storm began building up.
In Tillakaratne Dilshan 's company he added 43 and in Virat Kohli's he added 103 as the rate of 10 per over became a distinct possibility. And by the time Gayle had finished, RCB were in the driving seat. Virat (27), AB de Villiers (27) chipped in too to ensure that they passed the 200-run mark.
At 10.30 per over, it was a herculean start even before KXIP began the chase. And no sooner Adam Gilchrist was run out off Zaheer Khan's first ball, they were virtually out of the hunt. Paul Valthaty and Shaun Marsh too depa'rted soon giving easy catches as S Aravind produced controlled medium pace stuff for final figures of 4 for 14. It was never a contest but always the question of how soon it would end.
News Posted: 7 May, 2011
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