Our first visit to the stunning ground at Dharamsala and it was the perfect start from Punjab at their adopted home, it's a shame there aren't more games here because it is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the IPL. Their bowlers used the conditions perfectly to have the Chennai line-up in all sorts of trouble throughout before completing their modest chase pretty comfortably to keep themselves in with a chance to qualify, so long as they win their final game and hope Bangalore and Rajasthan drop points. Meanwhile the defending champions Chennai look likely to miss out on the play-offs unless they get extremely lucky with the other results. I must say it's a real shock that they've struggled this year as they have a stronger side with the addition of Jadeja, and I'd suggest Raina's failures at no. 3 have been the key reason as he's normally so reliable for them.
Punjab's seamers - Kumar 2-18, Harris 1-24, Mahmood 2-28, Awana 2-12
I couldn't pick out any one of the KXIP pace bowlers because they were all superb here and each deserve a mention. Having won the toss Gilchrist was keen to get first use of the overhead conditions, on a pitch with good carry, and his bowlers did not let him down. The amount of play and misses throughout the innings was unbelievable, the ball swinging and seaming past the swinging blades with alarming regularity for CSK who simply couldn't get near the ball. All 4 bowled their maximum allotted overs, the 16 overs of seam taking 7-82, a total of 7 wickets in the day falling to catches by the keepers which highlights how good a day it was for those who could pitch the ball up and let the wicket do the rest. Awana was narrowly the best on show, not getting the ball to move as prodigiously as his team-mates but still getting it to do enough in the right areas to beat frequently beat the bat of Dhoni in particular. CSK never recovered from their early set-backs as KXIP produced a master-class in exploiting the swinging ball, difficult just to survive let alone score runs.
Dwayne Bravo - 48 from 43 balls & 3-0-18-2
The only thorn in Punjab's side in this game was Bravo, who did his best with both bat and ball. Coming in at 42/3 in the 8th over against a ball doing plenty is not ideal and he really had to battle to hang around, accepting when a ball was too good and moving on to the next one. It was an intelligent innings in that he realised the pace bowlers could only bowl 16 overs and that the other 4 would be the ones to go after. Hussey and Chawla's 4 overs cost 35 runs as Bravo noticeably looked to step on the accelerator against the turning ball. He fell to the penultimate ball of the innings which left him 2 short of a deserved 50 and the lack of support around him meant CSK could only post 120/7. The total was a low one but CSK would have known that the pitch would still be in the bowlers favour and Bravo clearly hadn't given up hope. His two quick wickets, both caught behind, had KXIP at 69/3 in the 11th and one more wicket then and the game could have been extremely tight. It wasn't to be though as Chennai ended up totally outplayed with just a slim chance of getting 4th spot, not through a lack of effort on Bravo's part who was exceptional.
Adam Gilchrist - 64* from 46 balls & MoM
It was equally tough going for Mandeep Singh and Gilchrist at the start of their chase and, though they rode their luck, they made it through the difficult patch to effectively seal the win. When Mandeep fell, unnecessarily having a hoick in the 7th over, the Punjab skipper realised the importance of staying in to the end and did just this. This was his comeback game from injury and the decision to drop Marsh meant he was under plenty of pressure to score, pressure he thrived under to post his first meaningful score of the season. Gilchrist has struggled with his timing all year but there was no evidence of that here, particularly in the 15th over from Mahesh that was smashed as he carted it for a couple of boundaries and 2 pick-ups over square leg to the short ball for his 2 sixes of the day. He's certainly still got it and the combination of him and Mandeep at the top could be perfect for Punjab, a proper captain's knock as he saw his side home.
Delhi vs Bangalore
The strange decision to rest a couple of their star players backfired as you could argue that they'd have won an astonishing match if Sehwag and Morkel had been there, probably not though as Bangalore didn't too badly themselves! An awesome partnership between Gayle and Kohli saw RCB post a daunting total of 215/1 and, whilst Delhi threatened to pull-off an astonishing win, they were massive underdogs from the half-way mark, particularly without their best batsman.
Chris Gayle - 128* from 62 balls (13 sixes!) & MoM
It's safe to say we know where the orange cap is going this year as Gayle's incomparable innings moved him 160 runs clear at the top of the pile with 706 (easily an IPL record). It was another example of his new formula - play calmly for the first 10 and then tee off in the second half. At the half-way mark he had 35* from 29, the next 33 balls he faced went for a staggering 93 runs along with a record equaling 13 maximums. It just seems that whenever he wants to hit a six he'll manage it, scooping a near perfect yorker from Aaron over point for 6 at one point, as the bowler looked on the verge of laughter, there's just nothing you can do when bowling to a set Chris Gayle! If its even remotely full then it'll be cleanly swung over wide long-on to leave the fielders with no chance and it's not as if he struggles with the short ball. I'm running out of ways to describe his batting and I think 'ridiculous' is the only way to cover it, no one else in the world can even get near him in terms of ball striking.
Virat Kohli - 73* from 53 balls
When Dilshan fell, at 11/1, Delhi would have felt they were well and truly in the game but an unbeaten partnership of 204 from 17.4 overs saw to this. Kohli played his role perfectly as he looked to play as few dot balls as possible and made sure Gayle saw as much of the bowling as possible when it became clear that he was well and truly in the zone. This makes it sound like Kohli was simply scoring singles though and this is far from the truth as he picked up plenty of boundaries himself, mostly in the late assault alongside his partner. He's a classy player, one of the best of his generation in terms of talent, and there's no doubt that he's got a big career ahead of him. The captaincy has turned his form round and all of a sudden he's finding the middle with ease, timing it nicely with the pace on offer from Yadav and Aaron early on and never looking back from there. A superb knock that will understandably be overshadowed by Gayle's heroics, but it must be remembered that without Kohli's assured innings the big Jamaican would not have been able to play as freely as he did.
Ross Taylor - 55 from 26 balls
Coming back from injury, Taylor has really struggled this year, scoring few runs at under a run a ball and this has led to a very top-heavy Delhi batting line-up relying heavily on Sehwag, KP and now Warner. For this reason Delhi will be delighted that the Kiwi was able to rediscover his form in such brutal fashion, even keeping DD's glimmers of hope just about alive whilst he was at the crease. As per usual it was midwicket that he targeted and when he was going along nicely with Venugopal Rao (36 from 24) you couldn't rule Delhi out. He dealt with Murali really well, which is far easier said than done, playing with a horizontal bat to take the spin out of the equation and pummeled the leg-side boundary, his wagon wheel would certainly be an interesting sight! That is the kind of destructive innings that Delhi had paid for and they'll be hoping for more of the same in the play-offs, when he fell it was pretty much game over despite some impressive stroke play from Russell at the end.
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