Defending champions Chennai Superstars beat the Kolkata Tigers by 4 wickets in the the Edelweiss 20s Challenge match that went down to the last over at the Lal Bahadur Stadium, Hyderabad on Monday. Russel Arnold was declared the man of the match for his magnificent unbeaten knock of 66 runs.
Jeff Dujon in his pitch report predicted the track to produce true bounce making it conducive for stroke play. So Kolkata Tigers captain Craig McMillan won the toss and elected to bat.
The Kolkata innings was opened by Lance Klusener and Subhomoy Das. It turned out to be a disastrous start for the Tigers with both their openers being dismissed before the end of the second over.
Further disaster awaited the Tigers when a terrible mix up saw the end of Deep Dasgupta, leaving the Tigers' innings struggling at 14/3.
Two consecutive fours by McMillan off Shabbir Ahmed in the 5th over saw the Tiger captain trying to resurrect the innings.
By the 6th over the Tigers were placed at 33/3. At the halfway stage of their innings, the Tigers were back in the match at 69/3, with McMillan and Jhunjhunwala battling it out in the middle.
McMillan was dealing in boundaries and his wonderful innings of 69 off only 41 balls, which included 3 sixes & 5 fours, came to an end with a run out as a result of some smart thinking by his Chennai Superstars captain Rajagopal Sathish.
By the 15th over the Tigers were comfortably placed at 123/4. His partnership with Jhunjhunwala was worth 99 runs. Jhunjhunwala batted right through the innings to make a classy fifty.
A late onslaught from Rohan Gavaskar taking 18 runs off the last over from Shabbir took the Tigers innings to 185/6 in their allotted 20overs.
The Superstars started with a strong reply, scoring some big hits and taking the score to 40 for no loss in the first 4 overs.
Vignesh and Harvey were taking off from their good form in their previous match. Vignesh's onslaught was brought to an end when he was castled by a lovely slower delivery from Hayward in the 5th over.
Harvey was taking the attack right to the Tigers setting the park on fire with some lusty hits, till the young Pritam Das produced a peach of a delivery to uproot his off stump for a well made 49, in the 10th over.
At the end of the 10th over the match was a fascinating contest with the Superstars placed at 98/2.
The 15th over had the Superstars placed at 134/4 needing 52 runs off 30 balls at 10.4 runs per over and Arnold holding the key for Chennai Superstars' fortunes.
Ten runs were needed off the last over and it was Arnold's brilliance which took the Superstars to a fantastic victory
Brief Scores: Kolkata Tigers 185/6 in 20overs(C McMillan 69, Jhunjhunwala50, R Gavaskar 23, Vignesh2/18) lost by 4 wickets to Chennai Superstars187/6 (R Arnold 66, I Harvey 49, N Hayward 2/31)
