Tendulkar showed that there are no rules for batting

The Mumbai batting took the game away from us at the Kotla and chasing a 200-plus total meant that we were always going to be under some pressure to achieve the same. An 11-plus asking rate forced us to take more chances than we would have liked from the word go and that is where we lost our wickets and in turn, fell way short of the target.

Gautam’s injury was a big blow for us at the very start of the game as we all know how well he bats at the top of the innings. His batting could have made the difference while chasing the target and we all hope that he is fit to play in our next game.


Our bowling has done supremely well in the last couple of games, and I felt that there was not much wrong with it in the Mumbai game either. It was just a master innings by Sachin Tendulkar and the middle order batsmen for Mumbai. The bowlers bowled in reasonably good areas as they have in the previous games, but the Mumbai side took their chances in the game, and much to their liking, it worked!

Tendulkar showed the day before that T20 cricket is not only about smacking the ball hard and attempting to take the leather off it but also about elegant and intelligent batting. His was an innings full of deft touches and glides and manoeuvres and he proved again that one needs to go in with one’s own game plan to be able to succeed in this format of the game; there are no set rules for batting!

The Mumbai game is now in the past tense for us. We have to forget the match, take positives from the previous couple of wins and ensure that we do our basics right for the game against Chennai. The good thing for us is that the game will be played at the Kotla. The ground may have come in for some criticism in the past, but yesterday, it had all of us, the batsmen, licking our lips in delight. We play all our home games here and are looking forward for it to behave in the same manner!


Usually, when we have a match on every alternate day, there is only a single training session that is scheduled for us. That is normally reserved for individuals who need to iron out some chinks in the nets, or just face some throwdowns from the coach to get into shape for the next game. Talking of coaches, Greg Shipperd will join us in a couple of days, and till such time, Eric Simons has done a good job handling the boys.

We need to be as aggressive as we had been in the first couple of wins against a side that boasts of some serious batsmen in Hayden and Raina. We have heard that Dhoni has injured himself, but even if he does not play, the rest of the order is strong enough to pose something of a challenge for our bowlers. Yet, I back our bowlers to hit the straps and pose enough questions for Chennai to restrict them to a manageable total.