IPL week four: An IPL star is born, Dhoni rewinds the clock, SRH smash records, RR win thriller
A recap of the major matches and moments from the fourth week of IPL 2024, at the end of which Rajasthan Royals are still table-toppers while Royal Challenger Bengaluru remain tenth out of ten teams with just two points.
Fraser-McGurk stars on IPL debut
Big-hitting Australian sensation Jake Fraser-McGurk showed to the wider Indian audience what he’s capable of, biffing a terrific 55 off 35 deliveries on his IPL debut for Delhi Capitals for an immediate impact as the struggling franchise won their second game.
Fraser-McGurk had to wait five matches into IPL 2024 for his first innings, and off the second ball he swung the first of his five sixes. His 55 from the No 3 spot, a day after Fraser-McGurk turned 22, hastened DC’s six-wicket win over Lucknow Super Giants. In getting to 50, Fraser-McGurk emulated his List A and first-class debut where he also scored fifties. The standout over was the one in which Fraser-McGurk struck Krunal Pandya for three sixes in a row.
“So happy to be here,” he said after the win, while DC captain Rishabh Pant commented that the franchise had “probably” found their ideal one-down batsman after a series of misfiring experiments.
The youngster was drafted by DC as a replacement player and joined fellow Australians David Warner, Mitchell Marsh and Jhye Richardson as the Ricky Ponting-coached franchise. This came after Fraser-McGurk’s breakout Australian summer in which he enjoyed success for Melbourne Renegades in the BBL, a world-record hundred from just 29 deliveries in the Marsh One-Day Cup and then an Australia ODI debut innings of 41 off 18 versus West Indies.
Dhoni 20* trumps Rohit 105* in IPL’s El Clasico
If anyone needed remining of which Indian cricketer remains the biggest box office draw in the IPL, then last Sunday at the Wankhede Stadium underlined the truism that MS Dhoni rules the roost like no other.
Walking out to bat in the final over of Chennai Super Kings’ innings – in what was his 250th IPL game – Dhoni rewound the clock to put on a brief but belligerent display of his old finishing magic, hitting Mumbai Indians captain Hardik Pandya for three sixes in a row to end on 20 not out from four balls and get his franchise to 206/4. The fans gathered at the Wankhede donned more CSK yellow than MI blue, and the noise that sounded around the stadium when Dhoni walked down the steps and onto the pitch was something else.
And when Dhoni tore into Pandya, the tumultuous din that followed trumped anything else heard in IPL 2024 so far. Fittingly, Dhoni’s 20 runs proved to be the margin of victory for CSK. Despite a stroke-filled unbeaten 105 from Rohit Sharma – his first IPL hundred since 2012, and just second overall – kept MI in the hunt for some time, but four wickets to Matheesha Pathirana snuffed out all hopes by the time the death overs began.
Head slams 39-ball hundred as records tumble
When Royal Challengers Bengaluru skipper Faf du Plessis won the toss an chose to willingly hand Sunrisers Hyderabad first use of a pure batting track at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, one got the feeling that records could be broken, given how poor the home team’s bowling has been.
And that it exactly what transpired, as Australia’s 2023 World Cup final hero smashed a hundred off just 39 deliveries – the fourth fastest in the IPL – to help Sunrisers Hyderabad post a record total and thus set up victory over RCB.
Head’s brutal 102 off 41 balls, featuring nine fours and eight sixes, was the bedrock for SRH getting to 287/3 in their 20 overs, which outdid the previous record they set earlier this season against Mumbai Indians. This was Head’s second hundred in T20 cricket, and he moved from 50 to 100 in the span of just 19 deliveries.
Also weighing in were Heinrich Klaasen, who batted at one-drop and smashed 67 off 31 balls, Aiden Markram with 32* off 17 and Abdul Samad who hit 37* from 10 as 46 runs were looted from the last two overs.
Set a record target, RCB ended up 25 runs short after getting to 262/7 with Faf du Plessis (62) and Virat Kohli (42) scoring start of 79 in the batting Powerplay, but regular wickets left them with too much to do. Giving some reason for RCB fans to cheer was Dinesh Karthik who slammed 85 off 35 balls in another superb finishing effort, but the task was impossible. A fifth straight defeat for RCB leaves them bottom of the table.
Butler leads Royals to record-breaking final-ball win
A stunning unbeaten hundred from Jos Buttler steered Rajasthan Royals to a thrilling last-ball win over Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens this week, as the table-toppers matched the highest successful run-chase in IPL history.
This was Buttler’s second century in three matches and it took Royals past a target of 224, which put in the shade a fantastic maiden IPL hundred from Sunil Narine earlier in the match. Buttler finished not out on 107 off 60 balls, scoring his final 60 runs in 30 deliveries in what was a masterclass in how to finish a run chase when others failed to contribute big scores.
The next best score after Buttler was Riyan Parag’s cameo of 34 off 14 balls, followed by Rovman Powell’s 13-ball 26 at the death, which underlines how vital that century from England’s white-ball captain was.
Royals raised their 100 in the ninth over, and the halfway mark Buttler was 32 off 22 deliveries. The wickets of Parag and Dhruv Jurel slowed down the chase, and the decision to promote Ravichandran Ashwin ahead of Shimron Hetmyer and Powell seemed the wrong move, for Ashwin made 8 off 11 balls as Varun Chakaravarthy and Narine slowed down the Royal’s chase.
After 14 overs, Buttler was 42 off 33 balls and Rajasthan’s asking rate was 96 from six overs. He then took four boundaries off Varun Chakravarthy, before a six off Andre Russell brought the equation to 62 from 24 balls. Denying singles after the fall of Powell, in the company of the tail Buttler chanced his arm against Mitchell Starc and Harshit Rana to bring it down to nine runs from six balls, and then after hitting Chakravarthy for six first ball, he eventually won the match with a single off the last. In all, Buttler smashed six sixes and nine four as he notched a second IPL century of the season and seventh for his career, thus placing him second all-time, behind Kohli’s eight.
