Deccan Chargers 170 for 7 (Symonds 53, Yuvraj 2-21) v Kings XI Punjab
Live scorecard and ball-by-ball details
It was as if there were two games out there: Deccan against pace and Deccan against spin. They looted runs against the seamers and struggled against the spinners to reach a competitive 170 in the first IPL game to be held in Cuttack.
Whenever Deccan required some quick runs to get some momentum going, Sreesanth seemed ever-ready to gift them some easy runs. His first largesse came in the second over when he went for 23 runs with Adam Gilchrist plundering two fours and two sixes. A stunning six hit on the up to straight boundary was the highlight.
Gilchrist's 17-minute manic knock charged Decan to 43 in 3 overs. Although they lost VVS Laxman almost immediately - he was forced to retire hurt after being hit on his wrist by a wayward throw from Shalabh Srivastava - Gilchrist's effort allowed them to reach 84 for 1 in nine overs. This is where Sreesanth entered the picture to give his second offering to Deccan. This time around he leaked 16 runs, with Symonds hitting a typically muscled six over long-on and two fours.
At this point things could have gone pear shaped for Punjab, but Yuvraj Singh slipped in a tidy spell that read 4-0-21-2 to peg back Deccan. It was the typical bag of tricks from him - variation in pace and the alteration in trajectory - but it was enough to slow down proceedings on this slow track. In the 11th over, he removed Herschelle Gibbs with an arm-ball and saw a slow-off-the-blocks Rohit Sharma run himself out. Bipul Sharma and Piyush Chawla slipped in couple of relatively quiet overs and when Yuvraj induced Symonds to hole out to long-on, Deccan had reached 144 for 5 in 17 overs.
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