It was a moment to face two surprising and exciting news for the fans of Mumbai Indian. The first one when Mumbai Indians crushed Chennai Super Kings by 23 runs to lift their maiden Indian Premier League crown and second when the icon player Sachin Tendulkar informed his fans that it was his last IPL series. Despite this, after his announced for retirement from the league, a fitting farewell gift in front of a capacity crowd at the Eden Gardens.
The final match, as it was expected to be interesting and riding on a blitz 60 from Kieron Pollard, Mumbai posted a competitive 148/9 before restricting Chennai to 125/9 in a game played in the shadow of the spot fixing scam and amid reports that some more players could be arrested after the match.
The valiant unbeaten 63 (45b 3x4 5x6) by skipper M.S. Dhoni saved the men in yellow from the embarrassment of posting their lowest total ever, that had looked a distinct possibility when they lost their eighth wicket with only 58 on the board in the 12th over.
Dhoni's desperate 9th wicket partnership of 41 in 6.1 overs with R. Ashwin (9; 18b) enabled Chennai to last the full quota of overs.
Before this, Mumbai recovered from a disastrous start to post a respectable total.
Apart from Pollard's blitzkrieg, only Ambati Rayudu (37) and Dinesh Karthick (21) made useful contributions.
Chennai's find of the season Mohit Sharma, coming to the match with 19 wickets, spit venom as the Mumbai top order struggled against his moving deliveries.
However, the dashing West Indies batsman Pollard was on song to remain unbeaten with a half century plus score (32b 7x4 3x6).
The match ended in some nostalgia, as Tendulkar - who sat out the game with a wrist and hand injury - announced his retirement from the IPL.
The big match did not have exactly the sort of build up that one would have expected it to have.
The raging spot fixing scam seemed to have pushed into the background the on-field happenings as the scandal snared cricketers, an administrator and a small time Bollywood personality.
What is worse, as the game was on, there came reports that a Delhi police team was in the city and three to four IPL players were likely to be arrested after the final match.
(With inputs from IANS)
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