Manish Pandey hits Punjab title hopes for six in IPL final

Bangalore resident hits 94 as Kolkata win second Indian Premier League title.

Kolkata Knight Riders are the only franchise, other than Chennai Super Kings, to win the Indian Premier League title twice. Pawan Singh / The National

BANGALORE // It was a contest befitting the occasion as two teams that refused to roll over came hard at each other. It was a shame that there had to be a loser, but that is both the beauty and curse of professional sport.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) final threw up a classic at M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore last night. A capacity crowd saw a sensational hundred by Wriddhiman Saha, Kings XI Punjab’s unlikely hero, and a near-hundred by Manish Pandey, the hometown boy now plying his wares for Kolkata Knight Riders.

They saw fours and sixes galore, catches spilled and nails chewed beyond repair. They also saw a rare last-over finish in an IPL final, Kolkata nudging home by three wickets with three deliveries to spare.

Punjab, put in by Gautam Gambhir, had ridden on Saha’s extraordinary 115 off just 55 deliveries, the first hundred in an IPL final, to amass 199 for four, a massive total even in isolation, but worth several more given the stakes involved. If, however, there was one team capable of overhauling that total, it was Kolkata, a team that had steamrolled all comers for eight successive games coming into the final.

Kolkata promised and faltered at various stages, Pandey the glue that held them together with a fairly superb 94 that all but shaded Saha’s hundred. But when he threw his hand away in the 17th over, the sixth man dismissed with 22 needed, Kolkata appeared to have sold themselves short.

In came Piyush Chawla, who brought the equation to within manageable proportions by depositing the last ball of the 19th over, sent down by Mitchell Johnson, over long-leg, then creamed Parvinder Awana over and behind point for the winning boundary to steer Kolkata to 200 for seven.

Chawla’s winning boundary will be celebrated long and hard, but Kolkata owe almost their entire chase to Pandey’s incandescence. Having cooled off after a promising start, Pandey cut loose in front of his home fans, more than making up for the first-over dismissal of Robin Uthappa.

Pandey began with a whip-pull against Johnson off his first delivery, a beginning from which he kicked on remorselessly. He was the dominant partner in stands of 53 for the second wicket with Gambhir and 71 for the third with Yusuf Pathan – one of two men, Manvinder Bisla being the other, to pick up a third winner’s medal. Both Gambhir and Pathan played important, if not necessarily decisive, hands.

Pandey had single-handedly promised to take his side home until losing his head, and his wicket, to Karanveer Singh, who ended up with the bizarre figures of four for 54, but even as Suryakumar Yadav holed out in the deep, Chawla took Kolkata home, making them the second repeat champions in seven seasons of IPL play.

Very few would have foreseen the turn of events where, in a line-up that included Virender Sehwag, Glenn Maxwell and David Miller, that Saha, the little wicketkeeper-batsman would rule the day.

Between them, the celebrated troika contributed eight off 12 deliveries. Bailey, the other acknowledged big hitter, who promoted himself to No 3 after Sehwag’s fourth-over dismissal, made one off two. On another day, this could have proved disastrous. Punjab need not have worried. They had Manan Vohra and, more importantly, Saha, to make up for the cheap dismissals.

For a small man, Saha packs quite a punch. Walking in at 30 for two after Bailey had gone walkabouts to Sunil Narine’s first ball of the match, Saha quickly got dialed in.

Punjab made a clear tactical change, not just in Bailey moving up to one-drop, but also in holding Maxwell and Miller back. It was a dangerous change from tack in a match as significant as the final, but it paid rich dividend, thanks as much to Saha as to Vohra.

R Kaushik is senior editor at Wisden India. For more on IPL, visit www.wisdenindia.com or follow them on @wisdenindia.

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