What a cracker of a match

Harsha Bhogle wrote in Cricinfo on October 7 "Twenty20 is cricket too"

In his words "I enjoyed the World Cup, loved seeing the intensity with which England played Test cricket, and for many reasons have enjoyed watching the Champions League T20. Unlike in a good marriage, you don't have to love only one"

After a series of flops - Indian team in England, CSK in the Champions Trophy..here was my last hope - my adopted city "Bangalore" and my alternate favorite "RCB" making it to the semi-finals. After the 1st session, I guessed this was a continuation of the last 45-60 days where my favorite loses. Callum Fergusson and a name I have not head before, Daniel Harris, had a great time in the middle scoring close to 11 runs/over. Not sure how many times have we seen a side lose after scoring 200+ runs in 20 overs. RCB was very ordinary in the field - Mayank dropped a sitter, there were some misfields and Arvind [can't believe he has got into the Indian team] bowling a last over, giving more than 25 runs including a no ball of the last ball.

I was surprised with the composition of the RCB team and Vettori's captaincy - given Gayle and Dilshan were more than part time options and the wicket suited the slow bowlers more than the faster alternatives. Raju Bhatkal/Arvind could have sat out bringing Kaif into contention. If they head to Chennai for the final, I think Vettori should definitely look at this option of using Gayle and Dilshan along with himself and Syed. Even if he wants to consider a fast bowling option, it should be Mithun/Bhatkal to complement Dirk Nannes.

I got busy at work and stopped following the match. Then around the 12th over, I checked the scores again - was surprised to see Kohli and Dilshan play well and the score go at 11+ run rate. Now I switched on the TV and after 2-3 overs, Kohli, Tiwari, Dilshan, Mayank Agarwal, Vettori all go one after the other to some extremely good bowling from Shaun Tait. Now when I thought it was over, Arun Karthik showed that he could throw the bat around as well and he did more than a Miandad.

Karthik is an opening batsman for Tamil Nadu and had started playing for a Srilankan club [Bandureliya Sports Club]. Before Dan Christian bowled a very ordinary last ball, I was trying to think what Arun would be thinking - if it was me, I would have thought "Here is my opportunity to grab the attention of the world"...While I was still thinking, Arun gave a wild slog and cleared the ropes with ease...

By the way, we cannot undermine the contribution of Tiwari, Agarwal, Arvind with bat and Vettori. All of them cleared the ropes or hit a boundary just when the match seemed to go out of hand

What a match - the advantage kept swinging every other delivery.... Finally RCB came out winners to live another day and fight another Australian team.

Signing off for now and will be back after the Champions Trophy semifinals with my thoughts and commentaries

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