A Royal shock for the Super Kings!

With Bangalore Royal Challengers out of the DLF Indian Premier League (IPL), the only thing left for them in the tournament is to end proceedings with some respectability. However, their match against the Chennai Super Kings was going to be baptism by fire, as the Super Kings have been playing well in the tournament, and would have wanted to win desperately to qualify for the knock-out stages.

The Royal Challengers won the toss and elected to bat first on a rain-affected pitch, and that was a brave decision made, especially given that batting second is usually a good option in a night encounter. The Challengers also made three changes to their side, getting in Virat Kohli, Mark Boucher and Vinaykumar in place of the injured Zaheer Khan, an out-of-form Cameron White and Bharat Chipli. On the other hand, the Super Kings went in without any changes to their playing XI.

The Bangalore Royal Challengers had a different opening combination this time - their ninth - in the form of Jacques Kallis and Shreevats Goswami, but it took Manpreet Gony only four deliveries to get rid of Kallis. The South African scored only five, making it a woeful tournament for him so far. Player of the Match in the last game, Goswami then got dropped by Stephen Fleming, but he did not last too much longer, gone for 10. Interestingly, the umpire had declared Goswami 'not out', reckoning that he had not edged the ball, but Goswami walked. Bangalore were limping to 23/2 in the sixth over.

If this was not enough, Muralidaran came onto bowl and got rid of Virat Kohli, brilliantly caught by Albie Morkel at deep square leg for 10. The Challengers then slipped into further trouble as Lakshmipathy Balaji got one to nip slightly away and got the edge of Misbah's bat giving Parthiv Patel an opportunity to show some smart glove work. The Challengers were at a dismal 41/4 at the half way mark!

With this kind of a start, it was obviously going to be a difficult ask to expect a big score, and the next few overs went for only some singles and the odd boundary. It was only in the 15th over that there were a couple of boundaries that were hit by Boucher - off the bowling of Morkel - but, that again was too good to last. Boucher was given out leg before for 17. At this stage, Bangalore was 76/5 in 15 overs. Dravid battled on - he has been the only one from Bangalore through this tournament doing so - and reached 47 (39 balls), before he got out trying to up the ante.

Praveen Kumar, who has not had a great tournament with either the bat or the ball, did hit some good shots to clear the fence in the last couple of overs, but the Challengers could manage only 126/8 in their stipulated 20 overs. Incidentally, no other team has scored lower than Bangalore's 126 after batting the full quota of 20 overs.

A score of 127 was never going to test any team in this format of the game, unless the bowling team got some early wickets. The Challengers did bowl a couple of good overs to begin with - which went for only seven - but after that it was a free fall. Steyn went for 20 in his second over, whereas Indian medium pacer Praveen Kumar conceded 13 runs. Kumble came onto bowl within the Power Play, and did manage to stem the radical flow of runs, but the wickets were not forthcoming.

Chennai Super Kings were 44/0 in the six overs, and 56/0 at the end of the eighth. They did have a chance to get a wicket down, but Kumble and Dravid kept circling under the ball without catching it, and that summed up the story for the Challengers.

Kumble did get a wicket finally - of Parthiv Patel - in strange circumstances, caught and bowled off the non-striker's shoulder, and this brought Dhoni onto the crease. However, it was not to be his day, as he also perished pretty early to get the Challengers a distant chance. Fleming then got bowled off a no-ball, but failed to make any use of this 'life' as he popped up a catch to square-leg. This was immediately followed by S Badrinath's demise at the crease, plumb in front off Kumble and Bangalore were back in it; Chennai's casual approach getting them to 89/4 in 14 overs.

At this stage, Dravid brought back his premier pace bowler, Dale Steyn, back, and this is where the match turned on its head. Steyn first got rid of Albie Morkel off a short ball which the batsman tried to pull, only to be caught at the fence. After this, S Vidyut attempted another such pull shot, and all he did was to spoon it up to the short mid-on position, where Jacques Kallis dived and caught a superlative one; Chennai looking in deep trouble with the score reading 93/6 in 16 overs, needing 34 off four.

Kallis conceded five, but Praveen Kumar gave away 10 in his first three deliveries to turn the match in favour of the Super Kings. Kumar retorted back with a short ball, that Gony pulled straight into the hands of mid-on. Needing 18 off the last two overs, Dravid took a bold decision to bowl Steyn's last over, and try and get wickets, instead of preserving him. This got him rich dividends, as Steyn gave away only two runs under pressure in an over that included Balaji's run-out. The last over was delivered by Praveen Kumar, and he ensured that the Super Kings were never going to get 16 runs to win the match for his Royal Challengers! The Super Kings had lost a match, which they would have won 99 times out of 100. This proved to be the 100th occasion!

Anil Kumble was adjudicated the Player of the Match for his superb bowling spelling of 3/14 off 4 overs. Chennai remain at 14 points in 12 matches, whereas the Royal Challengers finally move away from their 4 points to make a step up to 6 ahead of the Deccan Chargers.