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Looking forward to our first home game

It was a pleasing start for Kolkata Knight Riders, writes John Buchanan

There was definitely an edge of excitement and uncertainty as we went into the opening of the first DLF-IPL T20 tournament. Administrators, sponsors, event mangers, players, supporters and officials, each in their own way, wanted the games to begin, yet had some trepidation about what the show might deliver.

But all that was quickly dispelled as the opening ceremony, followed by some entertaining cricket, launched the IPL into history as well as into memory. From where I was sitting it all seemed to go like clockwork to the point where the umpires and players were ready to commence play some three minutes early — this was almost an anti-climax to the extravaganza that had preceded it.

Immense talent

But that was only for a fleeting moment, because the immense talent of Brendon McCullum saw to it that fans around the world were treated to the best Twenty20 innings ever played. In fact, his unbeaten 158 would rank him very highly both in ODI and Test forms of the game, not to mention the fact that he played only 73 of the 123 balls bowled!

After Praveen Kumar had begun the game with a sedate first over, Zaheer Khan ran into the maelstrom called McCullum with three fours and a leading edge six all flying from the bat in the second over. Our team talk had suggested that if the wicket was doing a bit, we would be prepared to minimise the damage in the first five overs so that we could build from there.

I must say I wasn’t looking at Brendon at this point of the meeting, but obviously he did not hear as in the fourth over he swatted another boundary and a couple more sixes. By the conclusion of the fifth over, McCullum was rampant and Dravid had already been forced into two bowling changes within this period.

Fruitful partnerships

Losing Sourav Ganguly in the sixth over slowed the onslaught somewhat as overs six through nine yielded only 17 runs. Ricky Ponting was feeding the strike to McCullum as well as giving him some guidance on how to approach his game at this point. This pair had put together another 50-odd before Ponting departed and David Hussey continued where the Australian captain had left off — rotating the strike to allow the diminutive New Zealander full access to the bowlers.

A brief talk in the rooms from Sourav before the Knight Riders raced onto the field discussed the best length to bowl plus how to keep the correct mindset for the innings. Young Ashok Dinda was given first over and the young man did not disappoint. He picked up a wicket in his second over after Ishant had delivered the perfect full leg stump ball to Rahul Dravid, first ball at the other end.

Good job

It was a pleasing start for the Knight Riders. The younger members of the team did well. Dinda impressed first up and Saha did a very good job behind the stumps . Shukla responded well after seeing his first ball disappear. Sharma was a real handful and Hafeez did an excellent finishing job for us with the bat.

Shah Rukh Khan sang the team song in the rooms afterwards and had very quickly endeared himself to the team.

Yet we know one game, one win, will not make a season. The Hyderabad Deccan Chargers will be far more aggressive at the top of their batting order with Adam Gilchrist, Herschelle Gibbs, Andrew Symonds and V.V.S. Laxman leading the charge. Still, nice to have the first game behind us, and we look forward to hopefully bringing the Kolkata Knight Rider fans to their feet with our first home game.

Gameplan

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