IPL Shoaib Ahktar on fire

Shoaib Akhtar on his IPL debut has given a very good chance to pull of a victory in the match number 35 between Kolkata Knight Riders and Delhi Daredevils.
Shoaib Akhtar has so far taken 4 wickets for 11 in 3 overs.
His victims so far include
Gautam Ghambir c Hussey b Shoaib Akhtar
Shewag c Saha b Shoaib Akhtar
De Villiers c Taibu b Shoaib Akhtar
Tiwary lbw b Shoaib Akhtar

Lets see if the lower order of Delhi Daredevils can pull of the victory. It is for the first time that they are under so much of pressure. Delhi Daredevils are currently below Knight Riders on point table. They need to win this one to improve their chances of making to the top four.

IPL :- Kolkata Knight Riders releases its reserve players

According to the latest reports, 5 reserve players of Kolkata Knight Riders have been released from their duty. The coach of the team, John Buchanan, feels that these guys have not got even a single game so far in the IPL and they dont have any chance of getting one in the remaining tournament. The five players who have been relieved of their duty are Ranadeb Bose, Sourashish Lahiri, Rohan Banerjee, Cheteswar Pujara and Yashpal Singh .
It has also been reported that these guys will not loose any fees that they were supposed to get if they would have been part of the team.

It looks like the coach wants to concentrate on less number of players. Let’s hope his vision helps in achieving results for the knight riders.

IPL - Decccan Chargers failed to Charge again

In the 32nd match of the IPL between Kolkata Knight Riders and Deccan Chargers, Deccan Chargers again failed to click as a team. There performance while batting, bowling and especially fielding were below par. The bowlers sprayed the ball all around the pitch and the fielders never gave any kind of support to their bowlers and leaked a lot of runs. The last ball of the innings by RP Singh summed up the effort of Deccan Chargers on the field. He took the throw from the fielder and fired the ball at the batting end where no one was there to collect it and it went for 4 over throws. 6 runs came of the last ball and 17 from the last over.

Gilchrist started of well while chasing but took too many risks. He was very nicely setup by Ganguly. Dinda kept bowling short balls to Gilly and he failed to get hold of one of the pull and was caught by Ganguly. Both bowling and fielding from Knight Riders were much better than that of Deccan Chargers and that made the difference. Venugopal did his best to bring his team near the target of 205.

The highlight of the match was definitely the partnership between Ganguly and David Hussey. They put on 102 runs in 8 overs. Ganguly started slowly but after reaching his 50, he dealt only with sixes and hit as many as 5.

Result : Kolkata Knight Riders ( Ganguly 91, Hussey 57) won by 23 runs against Deccan Chargers (Venugopal 71*)
MOM :- Saurav Ganguly

IPL- Is Saurav Ganguly still afraid of fast bowlers ??

Even after playing cricket at the highest level for over a decade, the captain of IPL Kolkota Knight Riders is afraid of fast bowlers. He made sure that he has almost all the bowlers currently in the game who can bowl over 150KmpH in his team - Shoaib Akhtar, Ishant Sharma and to some extent Umar Gul.

He also very well knew that players from Australian team will be leaving early to prepare for the tour of West Indies so he will not have to face Bret Lee in any of the match and players from South Africa will be joining in late so he will miss Dale Steyn. Quite smart I should say :)

How many of us remember the way Saurav Ganguly danced to the music of Shoaib Akhtar when India played against Pakistan at Mohali in 1999?

Saurav Ganguly made scratchy 57 in more than 90 balls and was hit on his helmet and chest more than once by balls hurled by Shoaib Akhtar.

Shoaib Akhtar spell in that match read

Shoaib Akhtar 10 1 18 2

Shoaib Akhtar to join the Kolkata Knight Riders

The hearing of Rawalpindi Express has been postponed by a month and he is available for IPL now. This news will give a ray of hope to supporters of Kolkata Knight Riders lead by Saurav Ganguly.
Shahrukh Khan, who owns Knight Rider, has surely played a big role in getting this decision. He is badly missing extra fire power but does the inclusion of a maverick who has not played a single match for last few months boost the prospects of Knight Riders in the IPL. Will he really make an impact?