Kings drubbed by debutants

Mohali, Did Preity Zinta make the exact number of offerings to the holy fire? Did David Miller get the pronunciation of the mantras right? Was it Kartikeya, the hindu god of war and victory, the purohit tried to invoke or some other on the eve of the match? Did the Kings XI Punjab players perform the yajna with all their heart?
Perhaps not!
The gods chose to answer the prayers of Suresh Raina instead, who embarked on a new journey as the captain of Gujarat Lions, the new IPL team. The Lions defeated Kings XI Punjab (161/6) by five wickets to make a winning start to their IPL journey.
For the last eight IPL seasons, Raina has made a reputation for himself as one of the most successful batsmen in this fickle format. All these years, he has been a henchman of MS Dhoni, but on Monday night, he came out of Dhoni’s shadow, charting his own course.
Bravo!
It was Dwayne Bravo’s 4/22 that left the Kings on a wing and a prayer. His two wickets, that of Glenn Maxwell (15) and David Miller (2), in eleventh over pegged the home team back. When Wriddhiman Saha (20) and Marcus Stoinis (33) started firing, Bravo got rid of them too. Had Sarabjit Ladda not dropped a sitter on the last ball of the match, Bravo would have returned with a rare five-for in a T20 format. The Trinidadian though overtook Lasith Malinga (299) by bagging his 300th wicket in the IPL.
And then, it was Aaron Finch’s lion-hearted 74-run knock on which the Gujarat rode to victory. The Australian preyed on the Kings’ vulnerabilities, hitting boundaries of loose balls and stealing singles.
Finch stuck to a pattern; scoring one-boundary-per-over and then falling back on singles. Only the generosity of the bowlers persuaded him to go for two boundaries in an over. Mitchell Johnson, Sandeep Sharma and leggie Pardeep Sahu showed that generous streak occasionally, and Finch took advantage of it.
Both the Lions’ openers, Finch and Brendon McCullum (0), got stumped — one to a seamer Sandeep Sharma and the other to spinner Pardeep Sahu. But by the time Kings managed to get rid of Finch, it was too late.
Brief scores: KXIP 161/6 (Murali Vijay 42, Manan Vohra 38, Marcus Stoinis 33; Dwayne Bravo 4/22, Ravindra Jadeja 2/30); Gujarat Lions 162/5 (Aaron Finch 74, Dinesh Karthik 41 not out, Sandeep Sharma 1/21)