Gaurav Live

The IPL 2 continues to provide it’s viewers with some great heart pumping cricket action. The match today between Rajasthan Royals & Kings XI Punjab was a exciting contest but the excitement fizzled out as Rajasthan Royals came back royally. After piling up the highest total in this year’s IPL, Rajasthan Royals displayed a superb bowling performance to bundle out Kings XI Punjab for just 133 runs.

Kings XI Punjab won the toss & opted to field first. The conditions were excellent for batting & Rajasthan Royals made the most of it. Naman Ojha with Graeme Smith kickstarted the Royals innings with a superb partnership of 100 runs off 65 balls. Naman Ojha made 68 from 51 deliveries while Graeme Smith made 77 off 44 deliveries. Riding on this strong foundation, the following batsmen played their bit to get Rajasthan Royals to a mammoth 211 from 20 overs. Yusuf Pathan(12 off 7), Ravindra Jadega(33 of 12) & Lee Carseldine (16 off 9) made sure the Royals didn’t lose the tempo of the Rajasthan innings.

Coming to bat, Kings XI Punjab were put on backfoot with first ball dismissal of Sunny Sohal. The very same over Karan Goel to returned back to the dugout with the scoreboard reading two wickets for just one run. After that nobody except Yuvraj Singh(48 off 27 balls) manage to put on a fight. The Rajasthan Royals were pumped up & it seemed from the way they fielded. The big hits were dried courtesy some accurate bowling from Royals which led to regular fall of wickets. But there was nothing Kings XI Punjab could do – To cope up with the ever increasing run rate (Which went over 15 R.P.O) meant to attack & while attacking the disciplined royals bowling meant to lose wickets. All knew it was just one way traffic & it was just about time they(Kings XI Punjab) were to return with their heads buried deep down. At the end, the Kings XI Punjab seem to be playing a Test match innings as they were seemed to be instructed by their Captain Yuvraj Singh. They wanted to save their wickets so as to prevent their Net Run Rate from dipping. Though they succeeded in accomplishing this mini objective but lost the mega one. They lost the match by a hefty 78 runs.

Man-of-Match went to Graeme Smith for his smashing innings which laid the foundation for the Rajasthan Royals victory. With this victory, Rajasthan Royals climbed up to the second rank in the IPL rankings table. The show today was stolen fully by the Rajasthan Royals. They were the numero uno today. It wasn’t in the favor of Kings XI Punjab even for a splits-second. Now it will be interesting to watch out how the Kings XI Punjab handle the upcoming games. Meanwhile the defending champions, Rajasthan Royals have sent clear indication of their comeback to all other camps.

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