The extreme competition and the involvement of a cricket-craze nation like India have all made the IPL final one of the grandest occasions in the world. Is that right? And it gets even better when you have two of the best teams facing each other in a fight for glory.
From the stands and telly, the evening may look very peaceful. But the players are quite the opposite. There is so much going on in their minds.
But there is not much to worry about the strong influence of feelings in their performance. Still, there were a few players who were not impacted by any externalities, and they were a very important part of the game.
The players who are not impacted by the circumstances around them are most often the ones who grab the headlines.
5. Manish Pandey KKR: 94 off 50 balls vs Kings XI Punjab
It will always be hard for KKR and the other team to forget the 2014 final the year when for the first time in T20 cricket a team successfully chased a 200-run total in a final match of a tournament, being the team that did the chase, KKR.
This was what late-life Pandey did in the 2014 finale. After making a difficult start to the inning, He had to face an early setback in the second over, Kolkata’s opener Robin Uthappa fell down.
So what was one of the most challenging tasks that the KKR hero then had to perform? The answer is quite simple. It was avoiding the team’s coming under pressure without a share of the distinct ingress of runs and not to forget still be in the game. Pandey built and flourished among-st the way for his side and KKR was back in the game.
His removal on 94 almost handed victory on the plate for KKR. The achievement of Pandey heaped praises on the whole KKR and the second trophy was another instance of the possession changing hands of the team for the first time in the history of the league in a climactic match.
4. Murali Vijay (CSK): 95 vs RCB, 2011
Murali Vijay was the chief responsible for the victory of CSK in the 2011 tournament. He played a key innings to make it four from four.
Vijay and Michael Hussey opened the innings together. They had a stand of 159 runs for the first wicket.
Vijay did not rest after the departure of Hussey. He was on the verge of scoring a hundred, but it was a mis-hit that broke the partnership by 95 off 52 balls.
The innings that he played was a blend of bravery and wits which inclined the CSK score to 205, which was more than the one required by the opposition.
3. Sai Sudharsan (GT): 96 vs CSK, 2023
A third consecutive performance of the 90s is made. Instead of the latter two innings, the one under discussion, though a powerful contest, was short of success.
The GT Opening batsman Sai Sudharsan had the CSK bowlers with no clue and started his innings in a very calm and steady manner. The ground was full of boundaries and the GT player was found to be the reason behind this.
Starting from the 32nd ball, he became a straight run bee, with sixes being the boundaries wherever he wanted them to be. The 96 runs were made by Sai Sudharsan within 47 minutes at a run rate of over 200.
GT’s score was 214 runs on board. The question was what could go wrong from here? Soon, the rain decided to play and GT lost the match on the final ball.
2. Wriddhiman Saha (Kings XI Punjab): 115* vs KKR, 2014
It’s hard to describe the feeling of destroying the opponent with a century and still having to bear the pain of losing. Wriddhiman Saha possibly faced a similar scenario in the final of 2014; the team was already in deep trouble after losing two early wickets.
But Saha cleared all the pressure off his team with his lightning-fast innings. He played a rapture-like energetic innings of 115 runs off 55 balls that included 10 fours and 8 sixes.
However, Saha’s century wasn’t enough for Punjab as they could not prevent Pandey from scoring 94 and Bangalore heading towards their desired victory.
1. Shane Watson (CSK): 117* vs SRH, 2018
On the other hand, it was quite the opposite story for Saha and Shane Watson; Shane Watson with his hundred in the 2018 final, one of the very best, made heart melt.
CSK, needed 179 to win, were nowhere close to their target. They’d lost a wicket even before they could settle. Shane Watson was finding it difficult to bat against the new white cherry.
It was as though the new ball was taking Shane Watson to an uber-difficult situation. Out of nowhere, he stood tall and crashed 117 runs not out with which he got a homage paid to CSK for the third time.
To start with, it didn’t look at all like Watson would get a hundred the way he was going. But Watson somehow with his ‘never-say-die’ spirit made the big day his, and became the ‘Australian’ hero for Chennai in the IPL final.
