Karachi: The ongoing season of the Indian Premier League had proved to be a nightmare tournament for the Deccan Chargers as they have not looked in a crystal clear touch throughout the tournament so far. Nevertheless the match against Pune Warriors yesterday gave Chargers something to cheer about, finally embracing the much awaited win whipping the opponents by 18 runs.
Aussie, $1.1m-rated Craig White, for the first time in the tournament showed some resilience, scoring 78 match winning runs off just 46 deliveries hitting 5 massive sixes.
Chargers batting first got off to a very quick start scoring 50 runs with the loss of 2 wickets in the first mandatory power play of 6 0vers. Parthiv Patel and Shekhar Dhiwan contributed with quick 24 and 16 runs, respectively. Sangakkara demoted himself down the order to number 4 continued his poor show scoring only 14 runs.
At one point, Deccan looked in a perfect position to cross over the 180 mark but missed out the trick when White holed out in the 18th over to deep cover.
Even the absence of Deccan’s most likely match winner Dale Steyn wasn’t enough to prevent their first win in the tournament as Ankit Sharma played his role efficiently leading the team winning and keeping the hopes alive in the tournament.
Pune Warriors in reply tried their very best but failed to reach the target in the 20 overs innings quota. Panday, Ganguly, Uthappa accelerated the innings time to time but none managed to play a big innings to gain back the momentum for their team, eventually slumped to their fourth loss in five matches.