Sachin's captaincy lets Mumbai down

Captaincy has been a bit of a sore point for Sachin Tendulkar. And on evidence of some of the decisions he took against the Bangalore Royal Challengers, one reckons, it will remain that way. Sometimes the simple way is also the best way. If Chris Gayle, the leading run-scorer in the IPL this season, is one of the openers, then one of the things you’d want to do is try and get his wicket as quickly as possible. That would mean you get your best bowlers to bowl to him. But Tendulkar and the Mumbai team management had a very different plan. The Mumbai Indians skipper handed the ball over to Abu Nechim and this when Lasith Malinga, Munaf Patel and Harbhajan Singh were all playing. [caption id=“attachment_16945” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Chris Gayle was in splendid form once again. AFP”] [/caption] The result was a 27-run first over that kick-started the RCB innings and put Mumbai on the back foot straight away. Nechim didn’t really do anything wrong but he didn’t have the pace nor the verve to trouble Gayle. The first four came off an edge past slip, the second burst was a bad bounce that beat Tendulkar at mid-off. A six, two and four flowed from Gayle’s bat over the next tthee balls. From there on, it was all downhill. To make matters worse, the other opener, Mayank Agarwal clicked as well. He scored 41 off 31, rotated the strike well and hit a few big shots of Harbhajan Singh as well. Together, the openers put on 113 in 10.4 overs before Agarwal was dismissed but the damage had been done. Gayle was at his brutal best. He finally fell 11 runs short of his century but before he was caught by James Franklin at long on off Munaf Patel, he had hammered nine fours and five sixes. The rest of the Bangalore batsmen didn’t do much but on a Chennai wicket where the average first innings score is 160, they did enough. The second-half of the innings saw the wicket slow down appreciably and that made shot-making very difficult. In reply, Mumbai came out knowing that they needed something special. To put it simply, they need someone to do a ‘Gayle.’ However, Aiden Blizzard didn’t fire and Tendulkar tried (40 off 24) but it just wasn’t enough. Once again, Mumbai’s tactics were baffling. Habrhajan Singh was promoted as pinch hitter ahead of players like Kieron Pollard. Bangalore skipper Daniel Vettori led from the front with three wickets and was ably supported by Syed Mohammad, who took 2 for 25. The 43-run victory takes Bangalore to the final where they will take on the Chennai Super Kings on Saturday.