IPL 2023: Harry Brook, Venkatesh Iyer hundreds highlight action-packed week

The second week of the Indian Premier League’s 16^th season began with a last-ball finish and ended with a thrilling final-over win for table-toppers Rajasthan Royals against defending champions Gujarat Titans.

Here’s a review of the biggest moments from the week gone by.

 

LSG pip RCB in last-ball epic

A day after Rinku Singh’s five sixes in a row capped a tremendous win for Kolkata Knight Riders , it was the turn of Royal Challengers Bangalore and Lucknow Super Giants to throw up a thriller. Chasing a target of 213, Lucknow got there in a nervy final over when Avesh Khan and Ravi Bishnoi scrambled a bye from the final delivery of the match. This frenetic end came after Virat Kohli, Faf du Plessis and Glenn Maxwell each hit contrasting half-centuries out of an RCB total of 212/2 in 20 overs, which was trumped by the fastest fifty of IPL 23, off just 14 balls, from Nicholas Pooran and a match-shifting 65 off 30 from Marcus Stoinis when Lucknow had been reduced to 23 for 3.

Needing five runs off the last over of the match, bowled by Harshal Patel, Lucknow lost Mark Wood and Jaydev Unadkat and the equation came down to one run of the final ball with one wicket left. Harshal tried to run out Bishnoi at the non-striker’s end but missed his throw with Bishnoi out of his ground backing up, and the last-wicket pair had no option but to run a bye after Avesh swung and missed. It could have been a result for RCB had Dinesh Karthik not fumbled his take behind the stumps.

 

Mumbai overcome Nortje for first win

A day later, the clash of the two winless teams produced another last-ball nail-biter, if one lacking in cricketing quality and the same drama as RCB vs LSG. Bowled out for 172 after another sluggish half-century from the captain David Warner and an utterly contrasting 54 off 25 balls from Axar Patel, Delhi pushed Mumbai Indians to the limit but in the end the Australian pair of Cameron Green and Tim David completed a six-wicket win.

Rohit Sharma’s 45-ball 66 – his first fifty in 24 IPL innings – and a sprightly 41 off 29 from Tilak Varma appeared to have put MI on course for a straightforward win, but their exits to successive deliveries from Mukesh Kumar in the 16^th over of the chase turned the tables.

The one bright spark in Delhi’s bowling so far, South African fast bowler Anrich Nortje had only five runs to defend in the final over. Bowling quick and repeatedly nailing yorkers, Nortje conceded only three runs off five balls before Green (17*) and David (13*) hurried a couple off the last deliveries to take Mumbai to 173 for 4 in 20 overs.

 

Vintage Dhoni falls agonizingly short as RR pip CSK

Completing a hat-trick of final-ball matches this past week was the contest between hosts Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, in which MS Dhoni’s two sixes in the last over was not enough to get his team over the finish line in his 200^th game as captain.

On a typically sluggish Chennai surface, Rajasthan had been well placed at 85 for 3 after 10 overs but managed to put up 175 in the end. From there, how their spinners would operate was where the match hinged, and Ravichandran Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal and Adam Zampa collectively went for 95 runs in 12 overs while taking five wickets.

This left Sandeep Sharma with 20 runs to defend off six balls, and despite bowling two wides and then being hit for two sixes by Dhoni at the start of the over, he kept his wits to secure a three-run win for Rajasthan. Dhoni’s 32* off 17 deliveries gave CSK fans hope, but ultimately the home team had left themselves with too much to do.

 

Brook repays SRH faith with first IPL hundred

When Sunrisers Hyderabad’s owners forked out Rs 13.5 crore for upcoming England batting sensation Harry Brook at the IPL player auction earlier this year, the response was divided. Sure, the 24-year-old had been rewriting the record books in Test cricket a few months into his England career, and had smashed 80 off 75 balls in his second ODI to go with a 35-ball 81* in a T20I versus Pakistan, but wasn’t that a lot of money to put on a rookie?

Three innings into IPL 2023, and Brook had scores of 13, 3 and 13 off 39 deliveries faced. He’d been batted in the middle order and as an opener, but his mode of dismissals and low scores had left plenty of SRH fans cynically fuming on social media. This past week, Brook emphatically punctuated his tag as a future superstar by smacking the first hundred of IPL 223, off just 55 deliveries, to set up a 23-run win over Kolkata.

And in doing so, Brook silenced his unwanted critics. “I think I was putting pressure on myself after the first few games. People on social media start to call you ‘rubbish’. They were slagging me off a few days ago. Glad I could shut them up, to be honest. I just went into the ‘don’t care’ mode and played,” said Brook afterwards.

Brook’s innings was divided in two distinct halves and contained three sixes and 12 fours and took SRH to the highest total of the season, 228/4 which proved out of KKR’s reach despite another fine knock from Rinku, who slammed 58* off 31 balls, and skipper Nitish Rana’s 75 off 41. Brook, a T20 World Cup winner, hit seven fours in his 16 deliveries faced but then slowed down against KKR’s spinners as his captain Aiden Markram took up the charge with 50 off 26 balls. But once New Zealand quick Lockie Ferguson came on to bowl, Brook hit him for 23 runs in an over and never looked back.

 

Iyer ends 15-year wait, but KKR lose to Mumbai

On Sunday at a packed Wankhede Stadium, the pre-match buzz was about the long-awaited IPL debut of Arjun Tendulkar, and then when Suryakumar Yadav walked out for the toss and revealed that Rohit Sharma was out with a stomach, but added that he was in the substitute player list, you got the sense that this was going to be a special match.

But the real speciality was the 51-ball 104 that Venkatesh Iyer slammed, effectively on one leg after he copped a nasty blow to his right ankle on the ninth ball he faced. Iyer’s first T20 century was also Kolkata’s first since Brendon McCullum headlined the very first IPL match back in 2008 with a dazzling 158 not out, and it was indeed a stand-out innings because KKR’s next best was Andre Russell’s 21 from 11 balls.

Remarkably, until Shardul Thakur swung a four in the 12^th over, all the previous boundaries in KKR’s innings were from Iyer’s bat. He had, until then, struck five fours and eight sixes. Iyer kept hitting until he was out for 104 in the 18^th over, but Mumbai did well to concede just 45 in the last five overs and thus limit the score to 85.

Rohit did walk out to bat as Mumbai’s Impact Player, but he didn’t last long. A raucous 58 off 25 balls from Ishan Kishan set the tempo for Mumbai’s chase, and after a lean run of form, Suryakumar hit 43 from 25 before Tim David (23* off 11) finished the chase in the 18^th over.