Rohit comes to party

As he watched yet another one of his Chennai Super Kings teammates throw his wicket away, Subramanian Badrinath stood at the non-striker's end with his shoulders slumped and shaking his head. With scant support, the experienced right-hander had single-handedly kept his team alive in the contest against the marauding Mumbai Indians. Despite tons of runs in domestic cricket, Badrinath has remained the nearly-man of Indian cricket for close to a decade. And on Friday, his unbeaten 48-ball 71 was an outstanding effort. 

Not for the first time, his valiant and typically hard-fought knock had also ended up being overshadowed. And the man responsible for that was Rohit Sharma, who had earlier in the day produced an ultra-graceful yet dominating innings to light up a packed Wankhede Stadium. 

Unlike Badrinath, who has only a couple of Tests and three ODIs to show, Sharma, still all of 23, has already appeared in 61 limited-over matches for India. Touted as a star from his teen years, the youngster, however, has struggled with his consistency. In contrast, whose fling with the big-stage might have concluded almost before it really got going; the prodigiously talented Sharma has forever seemed to have a long and fruitful career ahead of him. 


But if there's one platform, where the Mumbai-lad has been a dependable asset for his team and also produced match-winning performances it has been the IPL. Having shifted allegiances from Deccan Chargers to closer to home this season, Sharma hadn't received the opportunity to show his wares for Mumbai Indians till Friday, with Sachin Tendulkar in prolific form. 

With Doug Bollinger accounting for the Mumbai skipper in the early going, however, Sharma had more than 16 overs to prove his worth — all $2.1 million of it — to his new franchise. And the stylish right-hander provided a delectable offering to both the Mumbai Indians's dug-out and the partisan crowd. 

After Bollinger's quick bouncer felled Tendulkar, Sharma brought them back to life soon by caressing the first ball he faced through the point-region for a boundary. 

He found the ropes off the next delivery, opening the face of the bat a little more and directing the ball much finer than the previous one. The next hour or so belonged to Sharma. 

Suresh Raina came in for heavy fire, before Sharma holed out for a 48-ball 87 but not before having guided Mumbai Indians to big score. 

Chasing 165 for a crucial win, the defending champions lost a bunch of wickets early, before Michael Hussey and Badrinath combined to resurrect the innings. Badrinath continued to score quickly and kept Chennai in the game till the very end. But Harbhajan Singh, who ended up with figures of 5/18, picked up three wickets in a single over, the 18th of the innings, to derail Chennai's chase.