Gambhir’s ploys work for KKR

BANGALORE:Gautam

Gambhir was charged up while marshalling his troops in the do-or-die playoff game against Sunrisers Hyderabad here on Wednesday.

Usually controlled in his celebrations, the captain was seen planting kisses on Piyush Chawla’s head after the leggie had got rid of David Warner.

But behind the expressive exterior, a shrewd brain was ticking. Every move was calculated like when he put two slips and a short leg for Yuvraj. Coming into this match, Gambhir was under pressure as KKR had lost four of the five matches. To begin with, he made four changes to his playing XI. And by the end of the first half of the game, two of his replacements, Nathan Coulter-Nile and Piyush Chawla, had already justified their captain’s decision with figures of three for 20 and one for 27 respectively.

The start of Sunrisers Hyderabad innings was always going to be the decisive period of play in the eliminator. Sunrisers’ openers David Warner and Shikhar Dhawan are on top of the run-getters’ list and all eyes were on Gambhir’s strategy against them. Generally, captains have been seen using 5-6 bowlers in the powerplay overs, but Gambhir gave

GAUTAM GAMBHIR IS THE TOP RUNGETTER FOR KKR THIS SEASON AND HAS THE MOST NUMBER OF HALFCENTURIES FOR A SKIPPER

pacers Umesh Yadav and Trent Boult an extended spell.

Despite not getting a breakthrough in the first four overs, Gambhir made Yadav bowl his third over too. Off the second ball, Dhawan miscued an attempted pull and wicket-keeper Robin Uthappa pouched the skier to give KKR the breakthrough. The score was just 25.

Gambhir timed his next move perfectly too. Recognising that Yuvraj Singh and Vijay Shankar was the last pair that could do some real damage, Gambhir brought back Umesh for his fourth and final over, the 16th of the innings. On the third ball of his final over, Yadav had Yuvraj caught at square-leg fence. Yadav finished with 4-0-21-2.

It left Vijay Shankar to wage a lone battle. Gambhir nailed him by employing Coulter-Nile. The Australian import took two wickets in the 19th over of the innings.

Having already helped KKR to two IPL trophies, there is not much to prove for Gambhir. But the way he fought it out on Wednesday, he again gave evidence of why he is bracketed among the best brains in IPL.