Knights hitch dramatic ride

Mumbai, March 12: The fat lady must be a night rider for she decided to sing late, and when she did, she sang “korbo, lorbo, jeetbo”.

Sourav Ganguly’s men turned the rankings upside down tonight, knocking Adam Gilchrist’s crystal trophy with their wooden spoon. The underdogs were under most of the way but in the end they topped the top dogs, continuing what’s become an IPL tradition: losers one season turning to winning ways the next.

Sourav’s men have two poor seasons to make up for.

It seemed all over for the Knights just when it had begun. In next to no time after being put in by the Deccan Chargers, the Knights had adorned themselves with a pair of binoculars to stare at defeat. Manoj Tiwari: 0. Sourav Ganguly: 0. Ball three of IPL Three and the Knights were already riding on rough.

Over the next five overs, they managed a mean run a ball, but lost two more of their top half — the vaunted Brad Hodge and the promise-ridden Cheteshwar Pujara. Four of Ganguly’s tigers gone, and he has only 11 of them, a whole 1,400 less than the national count. Early extinction was palpable.

It was left to two men from puny islands — Sri Lanka’s Angelo Mathews and England’s Owais Shah — to keep hope afloat. They climbed the sinking deck circumspect, but stayed till the end, even lighting it up with a flurry towards the finish. Mathews struck 65, Shah 58, both off 46 balls, both unbeaten. The Indian contribution to the Knights’ tally of 161: 10.

But who was to bet against Adam Gilchrist, pyrotechnician par excellence? He hit the ball to ribbons and took the Chargers past 50 in the first five — two sixes, two fours, strike rate 182. The real revelation, though, was unfolding at the other end. V.V.S. Laxman — one six, two fours, strike rate 170, a quicksilver cameo that he ended taking a chance on his classy dance and holding out to Murli Karthik.

Respite, Knights? Well, Herschelle Gibbs was walking in and Andrew Symonds was still in the dugout. The evening was still redolent with democratic promise, the game could slip either way.

Slip it did, and how dramatically. From 60 for none and a run rate of 10 an over, the reigning champions tobogganed to a loss few would have bet on. But that’s the T20 cookie, it crumbles after its own fashion. Gichrist went caught at square leg by Tiwary off Hodge. 99 for two. Gibbs perished in his skipper’s wake, taken at long off by Mathews off Langeveltd: 102 for three. Symonds was taken by Sourav off Ishant: 116 for four. Rohit Sharma was grabbed by Hodge off Mathews. 128 for five. Then it was the long Chargers tail with a tall asking rate.

Seventeen required off the last over and Sourav went to Ishant. He began with a no-ball but managed a neutral free hit delivery. He gave away only five and the Knights were home by 11. Sourav rid himself of his slouch for the first time all evening and leapt for joy.

The game was prefaced by a ghastly ensemble that was sinfully listed in the evening’s run-order as entertainment. It was unadulterated nightmare that taunted spectator sensibility.

It must have taken a mastermind to make such precious hash of time, technology and available talent — UB40, ABBA Revival, Lionel Richie, Deepika Padukone. There was a rainbow ring of strobes around the arena, a painstakingly tuned laser box, speakers fat as beer vats platooned across the park. But all of that was in hands quite deft at crafting disaster.

From the time the show rolled to the time it wrapped up, it was an agonising dose of chaotic kedgeree. Embarrassing pauses where nothing seemed to happen, unless it was some avant-garde trick that flew well over the limits of comprehension. Stilted choreography that pretended little sync with light or sound. A mostly eerie assemblage of wraith-like figurines whose object it seemed to be to raise a scare in the stands with their phantom visage.

Deepika Padukone could have offered some relief from the evening’s macabre burdens, but someone decided to straddle her with the company of a set of Gothic ghouls in wild feathers. Enquiries revealed they at least do humanity the favour of carrying an apt name — Black-Eyed Peas.

Fittingly, it ended in a damp squib, a minor sputter of baraat-party fireworks off one little ledge on the terraces; they all made up for fewer than Vijay Mallya would have used in rehearsing for the spectacle he conjured for the opening of the IPL’s first edition two years ago in Bangalore. Tonight at the DY Patil arena, the Bangalore show became a little more unforgettable. Tonight’s memories were entirely the making of Sourav’s men.


Sankarshan Thakur, The Telegraph