Chennai has the bowling balance; for Delhi, Viru must fire at the top: Ganguly

Chennai’s bowling balance has been somewhat bettered with Hilfenhaus coming in, writes Sourav Ganguly in Hindustan Times. “Along with Morkel, Bravo, Ashwin, Jadeja, Jakati and Raina, the skipper has lot of options. But Dhoni’s worry has to be more with his batting department. Raina has not fired till now, Vijay, Badrinath and Hussey have been patchy and even the captain himself was struggling before the knock against Mumbai. So, Chennai will have to be on their guard against Delhi in the big match on Friday,” adds Ganguly.

“Against Delhi, Chennai will prefer to play on a slower wicket as that will suit their style of play. Viru’s form will be important and he will need to fire at the top. Once Virender Sehwag does that, it will lay a solid platform for the others to play around him and build a score or chase down a total,” writes Ganguly.

We knew our eliminator against Team Chennai was going to be a tough game and in the end they played the best cricket, writes Lasith Malinga in The Times Of India. “For us it was a bitterly disappointing end to our IPL 5 campaign. We all believed we could win this year and I think we should have done better. Credit to Chennai though, they showed a lot of spirit recovering from a bad start. After taking two wickets within the first eight balls of the innings, we were obviously in the driving seat, but they managed to claw themselves back into the game with two solid partnerships. Looking back, the obvious turning point was the runs we leaked in the final five overs. We would have been happy chasing a total of around 160, but when we conceded 73 from the last 30 balls, it really put us under pressure,” adds Malinga.

Meanwhile Sunil Gavaskar writes in TOI that once again the uncertain nature of the T20 format came to the fore when Team Mumbai were defeated by a big margin by Team Chennai in the eliminator. “Chennai had lost both their earlier encounters to Mumbai, but when it came to the game that mattered, they raised the level of their game and beat the fancied Mumbai team. They will now take on the team that finished top of the points table, Delhi, for the right to play Team Kolkata in Sunday’s final,” adds Gavaskar.

“Gautam Gambhir has got this right more times than others and that is why his team is in the final. Sehwag, on the other hand, missed a trick or two. To give the last over to Varun Aaron, who has just come out of injury, was an unnecessary risk and it didn’t work as Aaron was taken for 21 runs,” writes Gavaskar.