Warriors go down without a fight, this time at home

After suffocating against Chennai’s spinners on a slow turner at Chepauk on Monday, the Pune Warriors were expected to have an easier time when they returned to the familiar environs of the DY Patil Stadium to take on the Super Kings once more. The rock-hard Navi Mumbai surface, however, exposed another glaring weakness in Pune’s lineup - the inability of their top order to handle the short ball. 

Miscued pulls brought about three of the first four dismissals effected by the Chennai seamers. Jesse Ryder was too late on his shot against Doug Bollinger, Mohnish Mishra didn’t shift his weight back against the same bowler, and Manish Pandey made the same mistake while trying to hoick a short one from Tim Southee. When R Ashwin tumbled forward at mid-on to latch on to the ball that popped weakly off Pandey’s bat, Pune were 41 for four.
Thanks to an unbeaten 43-ball 62 from their skipper Yuvraj Singh, the Warriors managed to post 141, but it was to prove an inadequate total. Powered on by the unceasingly consistent Subramaniam Badrinath, Chennai reached its target with three balls to go and eight wickets in hand. 


Yuvraj had his moments of discomfort too, leaping six inches to fend hastily at a lifter from Southee, and miscuing a pull off Bollinger that dropped between three converging leg side fielders. But apart from that, he showed a clear preference for the pace and bounce of Navi Mumbai over the grip and turn of Chennai, where he had laboured to a 43-ball 34 two days ago. 

Given room early in his innings, he reached out and drilled Nuwan Kulasekara between point and cover. When R Ashwin dragged one short, he skipped back and smacked him over the midwicket fence. When the seamers returned to close the innings, Yuvraj took them on, depositing Bollinger over long off and smiting Southee for two massive sixes in the final over. 

Pune’s mini fightback 

When Alfonso Thomas and Murali Kartik bowled maidens in the first and fifth overs of Chennai’s chase, the game looked to be in the balance — especially after Mike Hussey had provided Kartik with his first wicket of the tournament, swiping the left-arm spinner straight to deep midwicket. But the man who walked in at that moment dispelled any fears that Chennai was about to add to its win-less away streak. Badrinath has always looked a slightly limited batsman, in the sense that his strokes don’t exude truckloads of natural talent. When he plays the cover drive, for instance, he doesn’t lean into the stroke or caress the ball like, say, Murali Vijay, who was at the other end when he marked his guard.
But Badrinath outscored his long-time buddy with ease, and showed off a splendid range of self-taught strokes that have helped him go from doggedly grinding Ranji hundreds early in his career to becoming MS Dhoni’s trusted Twenty20 finisher. His most productive shot was the inside-out drive with the turn. He timed Kartik along the carpet, lifted Yuvraj beyond the cheerleaders’ platform, and slapped Rahul Sharma on the up, after skipping down the track each time and stepping inside the line. 

When the target neared, Badrinath widened his repertoire, driving Ryder straight back and squeezing a blockhole-length delivery, just wide of point and into the unmanned third man fence. After Vijay skied a slower delivery from Ryder to end a 61-run second-wicket stand, Badrinath was joined by Suresh Raina, and Chennai’s gallop gathered pace. Raina found the boundary whenever needed and firmly swung the momentum the visiting side’s way when he heaved Jerome Taylor for two sixes in the 18th over.