IPL-2022: As Pat Cummins Gives An Incredible Third Win To KKR Top Winners CSK And MI Complete Hat-Tricks Of Losses!

Indian Premiere League-2022 (IPL-2022), with 10 franchises only for the second time and restricted only to fours stadiums in Maharashtra till the play-offs, was expected produce hot rivalries and upset wins or losses in the process. That’s exactly what’s transpired in the first ten days of the T20 cricket extravaganza. More definitively, the results so far are evenly split between successful chases and defenses, thus neutralizing the perception that in the Indian pitches the chasing teams always win the matches. Before going to those details, we must first capture what Pat Cummins, a leading Aussie fast bowler of world cricket in both Tests and ODIs, has done last night in a match between Mumbai Indians (MI) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) played at Maharashtra Cricket Association stadium, Pune.

 

MI put up a rather dicey target of 162 runs to chase for KKR on a pitch where the batsmen have been seen to struggle to score runs. MI had the match in good control capturing the top 5 KKR wickets including the hero of its previous win Andrew Russel at 101 runs in the 14^th over with KKR needing 61 off 41 balls. Pat Cummins comes in at that moment with all-rounder Venkatesh Iyer (50 not out) struggling to retain his place in the team. Cummins does not bother about settling in, and makes it 47 runs off 36 balls to win. In the next over he makes it 35 runs in 30 balls. The match is now in favor of KKR, but the fall of a wicket at this stage is the danger of MI coming back. Anyway, most of the spectators thought the match would go on for at least three more overs. But Cummins had other ideas.

 

He picks up a team-mate Australian debutant fast bowler Daniel Sams for his demolition act. And lo! He settles everything in that single over, collecting 35 runs with 4 sixes and 2 fours and making Sams the fifth most expensive bowler in IPL history. And Pat Cummins becomes the second batsman to notch up 50 runs in just 14 balls thus joining KL Rahul who achieved the feat in 2018 playing for Punjab Kings IX against Delhi Capitals (DC). Pat remains not out with 56 in 15 balls with 6 sixes and 4 fours, hitting the last ball of that memorable over out of the boundary and giving KKR their third win by 5 wickets with four overs to spare. KKR occupies now the top spot with three wins out of four.

 

However, Yuvraj Singh still remains the top batsman to score a fifty in 12 balls in T20 cricket World Cup history in spite of the leaps and bounds the T20 cricket format has taken over the years thanks to the formation many leagues like the IPL. Who can ever forget that memorable innings of Yuvraj Singh in the ICC T20 Cricket World Cup-2007 when he hit six sixes in that over bowled by England fast bowler Stuart Broad in Durban helping India win the match by 18 runs and going on to lift the World Cup beating Pakistan in the final?

 

The most striking feature of IPL-2022 is that, so far, the top championship winners MI (5 times) and CSK (4 times) are yet to open their winning account, both completing hat-tricks of losing three consecutive matches each. CSK and MI occupy the 8^thand the 9^th spots respectively in the points table with negative net run-rates, and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) who had a forgettable performance in the previous IPL version too ornamenting the last spot losing both their matches.

 

The newbies, the KL Rahul-led Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) and Hardik Pandya-led Gujarat Titans (GT), are doing quite well with GT winning both their matches and LSG winning 2 out of 3 matches so far. A few of the biggest upsets so far in IPL-2022 are Mayank Agarwal-led Punjab Kings (PBKS) overhauling 205/2 by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) at DY Patil stadium, Navi Mumbai on 27^th March; LSG chasing successfully a mammoth target of 210 runs set by CSK at the Brabourne stadium Mumbai on 31^st March and winning the match by 6 wickets; GT suffocating DC in Pune on 2^nd April and winning the match by 14 runs; and the absolute rout of CSK by PBKS at Brabourne stadium on 3^rd April with the latter winning by 54 runs thanks to an incredible all-round performance by its most expensive buy England cricketer Liam Livingstone.     

 

Of course, it’s still early days to focus upon the possible play-off teams as each team would go on playing 14 matches each. Besides, the greats like Rohit Sharma (MI), Kane Williamson (SRH), Virat Kohli (RCB), Rishabh Pant (DC), Shreyas Iyer (KKR), Jasprit Bumrah (MI), Ravindra Jadeja (CSK), Hardik Pandya (GT) and a few others are yet to play to their full potential. The glorious uncertainties always make cricket exciting in any formats it’s played.