Virender Sehwag led Kings XI Punjab to their first final of the IPL tournament as they defeated Chennai Super Kings in the Qualifier 2 of IPL 2014. Wankhede Stadium has experienced a stunning performance from Sehwag as he scored the 2nd century of IPL 7 to set up a huge score of 226 runs on KXIP’s board. The people of Mumbai have seen the old “VIRU” with an innings of 122 runs in just 58 balls.
Manan Vohra supported him in a steady way as he scored 34 runs of 31 balls. Well, guess what Miller the Killer did the rest of the job in the back end of the KXIP’s innings with his quick innings of 38 runs in just 19 balls. It’s the third time in a row that KXIP got 200 plus runs on their board against CSK in IPL 7 and they defeated Chennai also for the three consecutive time in this edition of IPL.
However, there’s nothing much to say about CSK’s bowlers as they conceded 226 runs in 20 overs, anyway Ishwar Pandey, Mohit Sharma and Ravichandran Ashwin claimed 3 wickets equally and Ashish Nehra was the most expensive bowler as well as the highest wicket taker for CSK, he claime 2 wickets in the match.
While chasing a huge target of 227 runs Faf du Plessis gone too early by just facing 1 ball. After that Suresh Raina came to the ground and showed some real classy shots, at some point it was looking like Raina could reach such a huge target with his blazing shots all around the grounds but he lost his wicket because of some irresponsible running and a great direct hit from George Bailey (C). That was the turning point of the match for KXIP and Bailey received the Kanna Keep calm award for that moment.
That was a real entertaining stuff from Raina as he scored 87 runs in just 25 balls but sadly every batsman failed to support him. In the near end MS Dhoni (C) (W) tried to produce some quick runs but that was an impossible job for him, however Chennai managed to put up a score of 202 runs on their board by losing 7 wickets.
Punjab has shown a good brand of cricket to defend their huge score, they were brilliant in the field and produced couple of run out to turn the tide of the game. Akshar Patel once again gave an exceptional performance with the ball while every other bowlers were little bit of expensive. He claimed 1 wicket by considering just 23 runs in his allotted 4 overs. Karanveer Singh also supported him well with his leg spin as he claimed 2 wickets and conceded 32 runs.
The Man of the Match award was given to none other than Virender Sehwag for a value for money performance. Kanna Keep Calm award given to George Bailey for Suresh Raina's runout and Yes Bank maximum sixes award was given to Virender Sehwag for hitting 8 sixes.