The IPL season 2 kicked off with a superb encounter between the Mumbai Indians and the Chennai Super kings. A cracker of a match was on the cards. Both the teams had star studded line ups. Mumbai team was considered the strongest in terms of the bowling department. While Chennai being the hot favorites to lift the cup, had a slight dip in their bowling department. Chennai were last season’s runners up and few key players were missing from the Chennai side. Mumbai had the likes of Lasith Malinga and Zaheer khan(transferred from Royal Challengers Bangalore) and not to mention the blockbuster opening pair of Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya.
Mumbai started the match by batting first and as expected Sachin went on to make a blistering 59. Jayasuriya failed to get the going. It was Flintoff's debut match, much was expected of him. But Nayar proved everything wrong by hitting 3 sixes of his over. Before this over the match was going in Chennai's way. That surely must have hurt the calm and intelligent Dhoni. Abishek Nayar gave the Mumbai Indians something to defend. The target was 166. Hayden gave a massive start for Chennai but Chennai failed to capitalize on his efforts. Dhoni started off well, but couldn’t bat the way he originally does. As a result Chennai fell 19 runs short of a victory, handing over Mumbai Indians its first win the 2nd season of IPL. Much has to be said of the Srilankan Pace man Malinga. He was exceptional and delivered many balls right on the block whole. He scalped 3 wickets.
