IPL: 3 times 90 beat 100 and caused great heartbreak
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Team sport can be a strange muse. It is endearing, fun and promotes great kinship where people stay friends long after the sunsets of their playing careers. However, it can sometimes be equally exasperating and infuriating. Imagine playing your best knock, a once in a lifetime effort, only to end up on the losing side. Imagine scoring a T20 hundred in the IPL and then see someone who scored in the 90s end up celebrating at the end of the game.
What must it be akin to? Planning an expansive and grand destination wedding at an outdoor location, flying in guests from different corners of the globe, assembling the best chefs and getting the most beautiful cake decorated. Everything carefully crafted to ensure the most exclusive and the best day of your life. Only then to see untimely rain suddenly spoil all your planning.
Just that, in sport, the rain could be your roommate. Worst still, it could be your best mate. On some days, it is a combination of the former and some brilliance from the opposing team.
In the IPL, there have been many instances when a century has gone in vain. The most famous is that of Yusuf Pathan haring after an impossible chase, scoring a century off 37 balls for Rajasthan Royals and yet being on the losing side. On one side of the argument, the purpose is perhaps served given we are discussing that innings more than a decade later.
It is, after all, the legacy one leaves behind that trumps results in sport. One perhaps only remembers that game courtesy of the innings. However, in the moment, victory is the endgame. That is precisely the end towards which the means function. We play sport to compete but winning makes it all the sweeter.
That is why cricket is eventually called a team sport – individual contributions count only but as a part of a greater collective. To that end, here are three instances in the IPL where the team with an innings in the 90s by their player beat a team that had a centurion.
IPL 2014: Kolkata Knight Riders vs Kings XI Punjab
It must have been a good day to be a cricket lover from Kolkata. A better day to be a Kolkata Knight Riders fan. And if you were both, it must have been the best day. KKR had, of course, already won the IPL once before. This was the day they confirmed themselves as an elite team – joining Chennai Super Kings then as the only team to have won the IPL twice.
Moreover, for a city with such passionate support yet mostly in the cricketing fringes, one of their boys starred. It was as though someone had served up Biryani and ‘Luchi Mangsho’ in the same meal.
Wriddhiman Saha from Kolkata became the first man in the history of the IPL to score a hundred in the final. At the same time, he became the first Indian wicketkeeper to achieve this feat too. Ahead of some illustrious names.
Saha came in to bat at 31-2, ahead of MVP Glenn Maxwell and at the time, the move may have perplexed many. But, in hindsight, it makes sense – an Indian batsman who knows the pitch and conditions well to tackle a mystery spinner and a leg break bowler on a smallish Chinnaswamy ground. And Saha made the most of this opportunity, carefully dismantling the mystery of Sunil Narine, the pace of Morne Morkel and the guile of Shakib, all with equal ease. By the time the Bengal batsman was finished, KKR was set an unprecedented 200 to stand once again on the podium.
At the innings break, captain Gautam Gambhir may have been looking around for a Manvinder Bisla to break the record of the highest chase in a final they had set two years back. He did not quite find a Manvinder, but there was a Manish. To top it off, a Pandey was right at home in Karnataka. Coming off a grand home season based out of the very ground of the IPL final, Manish Pandey batted with panache befitting a king, and bravado befitting a knight.
There is a lot of subtext to both – King being one of KKR co-owner Shahrukh Khan’s many nicknames in Bollywood and Knight being in the name of the team Pandey represents.
Pandey hit six sixes in his victorious innings of 94 but more memorable was the audacity of his timing. Thrice in his innings, he hit the very next ball after a wicket fell for a six. All three times, the bowler at the receiving end was the wicket-taker Karanveer Singh.
Result: Manish Pandey 94 (50) beat Wriddhiman Saha 115 (55)
IPL 2018: Delhi Daredevils vs SunRisers Hyderabad
They may be teammates now at a rechristened Delhi Capitals, but back in 2018, the left-hand duo of Rishabh Pant and Shikhar Dhawan were playing for different teams; battling to thwart the other.
In the 2018 edition of the IPL, SRH’s charge to the final was largely based on their bowling. Clearly, Pant had not received the memo. He hardly does, the man writes his own script; and this century of his is one of the most unforgettable innings in the history of the IPL.
The hitting on display was breathtaking. He hadn’t even reached his half-century when 14 overs were completed. But, by the end of the innings, he had 128 unbeaten runs. En route, he had taken apart two of the best bowlers in IPL history. 70 runs off 24 balls faced from Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Rashid Khan. Yorkers, googlies, pedigree, and respect were all playing second fiddle to this little man’s Hulkesque smash. And the smash carried over to the doors of national selection too.
However, his magical one-man show would not be enough on the night as SRH – chasing 188 – steamrolled to a nine-wicket victory in that game of the IPL. Williamson got 83 and Dhawan scored a stroke-filled 92 off 50, which on another night would have been very well celebrated. In fact, it was Dhawan who was awarded the Player of the Match trophy, which although a little strange was not aberrant.
Result: Shikhar Dhawan 92 (50) beat Rishabh Pant 128* (63)
IPL 2021: Rajasthan Royals vs Punjab Kings
Single denied off the penultimate ball with 5 runs required. Slashed hard at a wide ball off the ultimate. Thinks he has won the game for his side only to agonisingly watch Deepak Hooda settle underneath the dropping ball. Sanju Samson went from hero to fallen hero in the space of seconds in IPL 2021. Sadly, the single denied will always be entangled in the same breath as a magical innings that almost completed an astounding chase. In the end, it was not to be.
For the second IPL in a row, Royals were on course to pull off a Houdini act against the Punjab franchise. If that game will be remembered for the victorious Rahul Tewatia, this one will be for the centurion Samson. To put the skipper’s performance into context, the next best score in the Royals innings was 25. And they fell only 4 runs short of Punjab’s 221 runs.
Samson’s 119 run-innings was glittered with 12 fours, 7 sixes, unquantifiable class, and immeasurable elegance. He came in without his side registering on the board in the first over of the chase and his very first scoring shot was a nonchalant swat off his hips for four. To the same boundary, he sent a six that was perhaps the most dismissive flick shot of the tournament. He did not even look up to see where the ball had gone.
He was timing jabs for sixes. Until the last ball of the innings. And that brought relief to his counterpart KL Rahul. Himself a top-order wicketkeeper batsman and captain, Rahul had set the match up with an elegant 91 himself. All the adjectives and superlatives used to describe Samson apply to Rahul as well. Easy on the eye and just so pleasurable to watch, Rahul had shed his anchor cloak of last season to take Punjab Kings to a score they must have felt was enough. Eventually it was, but Rahul’s team would do well to not repeat such heartstoppingly close moments in the IPL.
Result: KL Rahul 91 (50) beat Sanju Samson 119 (63)
Also Read: Why Glenn Maxwell will finally star for RCB in the IPL
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Arinjay Ghosh
(77 Articles Published)