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Gilchrist leads from the front
06/05/2008 20:59 - (SA)
Chennai - Deccan Chargers skipper Adam Gilchrist led from the front with a typically aggressive half century to lead his hitherto struggling team to a comprehensive victory by seven wickets against the Chennai SuperKings in their IPL match at the MA Chidambaram stadium on Tuesday evening.
Chasing a modest 144-7 on a near perfect batting strip, Gilchrist led a charge by the franchise's foreign players with 54 from just 36 balls leaving New Zealander Scott Styris and Pakistani Shahid Afridi to complete the job with unbeaten scores of 36 and 20 respectively.
Styris was positively pedestrian as he inched towards the target during his 41-ball stay at the crease while Afridi's runs were spectacularly simple coming from just four blows, two fours and two sixes.
Earlier SuperKings all rounder Albie Morkel blasted 20 runs from the final over to boost his side from obscurity to a semi-respectable total of 144-7.
Chargers captain Adam Gilchrist won the toss and chose to bowl first and was immediately vindicated by left arm seamer RP Singh who grabbed an early wicket and finished with the outstanding analysis of 3-0-12-2.
But every member of the Chargers attack bowled well and the first six wickets were taken by six different bowlers.
SK Raina made yet another promising start before tamely lobbing a full toss to extra cover for 32 from 21 deliveries and captain MS Dhoni appeared to destermined to lay the platform for a late assault by carefully reaching 23 from 31 balls before mistiming a pull shot onto his pad before watching it, bizarrely, lob all the way to Shahid Afridi at point.
But the late charge did eventually materialize from Morkel who finished 29 not out from 19 deliveries with a four and two sixes.
The SuperKings, coached by Kepler Wessels, were desperate to get back to winning ways after losing their last two matches to slip from first to fourth on the log. They remain fourth after a third successive loss while the Chargers still remain outside the top four despite this win.
Scores:
Chennai SuperKings 144-7 (SK Raina 32, Albie Morkel 29 not out)
Deccan Chargers: 148-3 (Adam Gilchrist 54, Scott Styris 36 not out)
Teams:
Deccan Chargers: Adam Gilchrist (captain), Herschelle Gibbs, Venugopal Rao, Scott Styris, Rohit Sharma, Shahid Afridi, Arjun Yadav, Sanjay Bangar, RP Singh, P Vijaykumar, Pragyan Ojha
Chennai SuperKings: Parthiv Patel, Stephen Fleming, Suresh Raina, Anirudh Srikkanth, Albie Morkel, MS Dhoni (captain), S Badrinath, Joginder Sharma.
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Rugby
