IPL Final | Meme Report - Lasith Malinga, Jasprit Bumrah help Mumbai Indians win fourth title despite Watson heroics

05/13/2019

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Shane Watson played one brilliant innings and almost helped Chennai Super Kings win the title, but Lasith Malinga held his nerve in the last over to guide Mumbai to a win. Earlier, Kieron Pollard’s late order surge was the major reason behind Mumbai reached a comfortable total in the first place.

There is an interesting stats that is on offer in the Indian Premier League finals as eight out of 11 IPL finals have been won by sides winning the toss. Mumbai desperately wanted to win the toss, after losing three times to CSK this season, and the lady luck finally given them what they wanted - a toss win in the final. CSK’s incredible consistency with the toss eventually ended.

After two cold two overs, Quinton de Kock decided to break the shackle and hit Deepak Chahar for 20 runs in one over to put the MS Dhoni-led team under pressure. Given Chahar was bowling in the slot and was unable to move it through air, the Mumbai Indians opener had it very easy as Mumbai Indians moved to 23/0 in four overs.

Shardul Thakur gave to the first break though for Chennai by dismissing de Kock and even before MS Dhoni took the catch, Thakur started celebrating. By giving a send-off to him, he heated the game and that made Dhoni bring Chahar back to the attack. It instantly worked as he sent Rohit Sharma back with a slower ball. A maiden over pulled the game in CSK’s favour and Mumbai were reduced to 53/2 in 8 overs.

After the team lost their openers, Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav tried to rebuild the innings, and they went slow for the same. However, things couldn’t pan out the way Mumbai would’ve liked as Tahir bowled Suryakumar Yadav in the 12th over to give some sort of consensus to CSK’s bowling with Mumbai being on 85-3 in 12 overs.

The real drama was the last few overs as Pollard struck hard to restore parity. However, after the umpire didn’t call, what looked like a clear wide, Pollard "took a wide stance" and eventually pulled himself away to show his displeasure. But the fact of the matter of was CSK were happy restricting their arch-rivals to 149 while 170 looked like a distinct possibility.

Chasing 150, CSK needed their opening pair to contribute heavily with the bat and Faf du Plessis knew that clearly. While Shane Watson went slow, Faf attacked his way out and the fourth over, which was bowled by Krunal Pandya, gave him the impetus of going gung go. He collected 14 runs off that over, but then he was dismissed on the last delivery as Mumbai secured their first wicket.

After the South African batsman's dismissal, Watson started taking chances here and there and was successful in keeping the scorecard ticking. To his fortune, he had a couple of lives as well and that made the defending champions confident about a win even though they lost two batsmen suddenly. However, while attempting a couple, MS Dhoni missed the crease by a whisker and the game was completely screwed in Mumbai’s favour.

Watson was getting one life after another and at one point, it seemed like he was the luckiest player in the world. However, the game was slowly slipping from CSK’s hands and they needed a miracle to stop Mumbai from winning the fourth title. But Watson suddenly brought his A game to the fore and by hitting 20 runs off Lasith Malinga’s last over, he ensured that the game would go either way.

With nine runs to defend in the last over, Malinga dismissed Watson and when Shardul Thakur came out to bat, the equations was five runs off 3 balls. With two runs needed off the last ball, Malinga bowled a perfect inducker which wrapped on Thakur’s pads as Mumbai sealed the game in their favour. Mumbai Indians are the flag bearers of the IPL now.

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