Wriddhiman Saha and Manish Pandey shine in IPL 7 final

Category :Cricket

Wriddhiman Saha and Manish Pandey stole the show on the finals of the seventh season of IPL. When on one hand Saha scored a century, Pandey came close to scoring one.

It was another super batting show from the two Indian batsmen in the IPL. Wriddhiman Saha scored a superb century close on the heels of the earlier century by his teammate Virender Sehwag. Saha remained not out on 115 and Pandey was dismissed for 94 runs.

Before this there were two centuries in this IPL season. The first was scored by Lendl Simmons for Mumbai Indians and the second one was scored by Sehwag for the Punjab team. Both centuries had come in a winning cause for the respective teams.

This is the only century in the season that has virtually gone waste. A batting performance that was talked of so much and admired to a high extent, but that was only until then next 19.3 overs.

In between, another Indian batsman took over the reins and overshadowed Saha’s efforts.

Saha came in to bat when Kolkata were tottering at 30/2. However, the face of the game changed when the batsman put his foot on the pitch. He faced just 55 balls and hit eight huge sixes. The knock also included 10 cracking boundaries. He shared a valuable partnership with Vohra, who scored 67 runs.

Fortune was on Saha’s side as he got two lives in the Sunil Narine over. He was dropped by the bowler and on the very next ball a very simple stumping opportunity was missed as the keeper held the ball before it had passed the stumps to stump the batsman out.

Even Pandey was very attacking right from the very start of his innings. It was primarily due to his innings that made the other batsmen play freely. Moreover, he also kept pace with the asking rate. That is why the target was never out of sight for the Kolkata batsmen.

With the help of 31 balls, Pandey reached his half-century. This included five fours and a couple of big sixes. He was given good company by batsmen like first Gautam Gambhir and then by Yusuf Pathan. He had a fruitful little partnership with Shakib Al Hasan as well. The chase was always on as long as Pandey was at the crease.

He was dismissed on a personal score of 94 runs, potentially losing a chance to score a century. When he was out, the team score was 179 runs – still 21 runs away from victory with 18 balls left. However, he set the stage for a win long before and it was only a formality, but still a responsibility for the later batsmen to win KKR their second IPL title.