You know you’ve watched something pretty special when several drafts of your report end up in the recycle bin. The memorable contests have so many twists and turns and reversals of fortune that the last word can’t be written until long after the final delivery or final whistle. It was that way with the FIFA World Cup final in December 2022, and cricket’s World Cup final three and a half years earlier. The match that made India fall in love with the shorter format, the World T20 final of 2007, went to the final over, with Pakistan finishing a big hit away from glory.
But even if you had watched all of those contests in real time, it was hard to make sense of what happened at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Monday night. The win-predictor didn’t just go crazy, it went up and down a bit like the nausea-inducing Pirate Ship ride found at some amusement parks.
By the time Faf du Plessis and Glenn Maxwell had added 115 off 50 balls to build on Virat Kohli’s brisk start, Bangalore’s win probability was well over 80. And when Lucknow limped to 37 for 3 in their Power play, the result appeared to be a foregone conclusion. But as Rinku Singh had shown the previous afternoon, this league no longer deals in foregone conclusions.
Lucknow, despite suffering those early blows, just kept on swinging, one haymaker after another. So impactful was Marcus Stoinis’s Catherine Wheel strokeplay that Lucknow got to 100 in 11 overs, nine balls quicker than Bangalore had. But it was what followed the dismissals of Stoinis and KL Rahul that utterly transformed the game.
Few hit a cricket ball as cleanly as Nicholas Pooran. It’s that striking ability that made Sunrisers Hyderabad shell out 10.75 crores for him before the 2022 season, despite an abysmal 85 runs from 11 innings in the colours of the Punjab Kings the previous season. Even that figure was subsequently dwarfed by the 16 crores that Lucknow spent to make him the key piece in their middle-order jigsaw.
Thanks to Pooran, Lucknow went from 100 to 150 in just three overs. The pitch maps for both Karn Sharma and Harshal Patel resembled canvases on to which an unruly child had flicked big blobs of paint. Faced with such generous bowling, Pooran wasn’t about to miss out. By then, the win-predictor had swung the other way, with Lucknow given more than an 80 per cent chance.
That they then contrived to almost lose it was only partly down to Bangalore’s efforts. Mohammed Siraj was magnificent, the pick of the bowlers on view by a distance. But for an over where Pooran punished him ruthlessly, Wayne Parnell – playing his first IPL game since 2014 – was nearly as good. And Harshal, after being caned to the tune of 35 runs in his first two overs, came back magnificently to concede just 13 in the next two.
Pooran was in such sublime form that he could be forgiven the big heave off a full toss that cost him his wicket. But what followed was pandemonium, and showed what can happen when lower-order batters who rarely get to the middle are asked to make decisive contributions.
In such games, luck plays a part too. Ayush Badoni guessed that Parnell, who had bowled two wides earlier in the over, would attempt another wide yorker and got into position to play a superb scoop over fine leg for six. Unfortunately for him, the one-handed flourish that followed the execution of the stroke saw the toe end of the bat brush the stumps. Instead of a six and the scores tied with eight balls remaining, Lucknow needed seven more with no recognised batters left.
After his 32-wicket Purple-cap season in 2021, and a fine tournament last year when his economy rate was just 7.66, there have been murmurs that batters had cottoned on to Harshal’s changes of pace and other variations. In the 16 internationals he played after the IPL in 2022, he conceded 9.53 runs an over.
Mark Wood and Jaydev Unadkat are hardly gun batters though, and there was more than an element of naivete about the manner in which both tried to swing for the trees in the final over. Wood’s attempt connected with fresh air, while Unadkat’s only made it as far as du Plessis at mid-on.
But Bangalore and Harshal were hardly blooper-proof either. Spotting Ravi Bishnoi trying to steal a couple of yards from the non-striker’s end, Harshal, instead of stopping and flicking the bails off, completed his action and then threw the stumps down. The umpire straightaway explained through gestures why he had no interest in upholding the appeal.
With Avesh Khan having faced just 20 balls in an IPL career that stretches back to 2017, a Super Over was a distinct possibility. But this topsy-turvy game which had swung from Bangalore to Lucknow and back to Bangalore again had one more O Henry twist in store.
Seven years ago, at the same venue, with Bangladesh needing two to win off the final delivery, MS Dhoni took his right glove off in preparation for a shy at the stumps. As things turned out, with No.9 and No.10 attempting to scamper the bye that would have tied the scores, Dhoni sprinted to the stumps after gathering the ball and broke them to catch Mustafizur Rahman short of the crease.
Needing to reprise that scenario, Dinesh Karthik fumbled the ball. His throw then missed the stumps, and a jubilant Avesh threw his helmet on to the turf on completing the bye and his team’s jailbreak. Kohli allowed himself a rueful smile, while di Plessis spoke of how Bangalore had lost momentum with the bat after the Powerplay.
If Lucknow’s innings taught us anything, it was that there can be no building an innings of such a bat-friendly pitch. After racing to 56 in the six overs of Power play, Bangalore had just one big over in the next seven – 13 from the 10th bowled by Krunal Pandya. Those were the overs in which Stoinis and Pooran lined up Bangalore’s weaker bowling links and hammered away.
Kohli and du Plessis combined for 140 runs in 90 deliveries. In another era, that would have been mind-boggling. But when up against a duo that can plunder 127 in 49 balls, it seems pretty mundane. As the game evolves, so too do our notions of velocity and momentum.