Feature

Dhoni sweeps a fast bowler

Plays of the Day from the IPL game between Pune Warriors and Chennai Super Kings in Pune

Sidharth Monga
Sidharth Monga
30-Apr-2013
MS Dhoni hit powerfully when he was not busy sweeping Ashok Dinda  •  BCCI

MS Dhoni hit powerfully when he was not busy sweeping Ashok Dinda  •  BCCI

The howler
In their previous game, Chennai Super Kings suffered because of bad umpiring. This time they benefitted when Wriddhiman Saha was caught plumb by Bhuvneshwar Kumar without having scored a run, but the only man that mattered, Subrat Das, disagreed with everybody else watching the match. This is perhaps the biggest conflict of interest: a BCCI product doing its best to make a case for DRS.
The sweep
MS Dhoni playing a sweep is rare enough, but today he kept sweeping Ashok Dinda. The first time he faced Dinda, he went down on one knee and dragged the ball from wide outside off to send it to fine leg for four. Two more attempts followed, with Dhoni missing one, and the other being sent to midwicket for four. The plan to bowl full and wide with a strong off-side field was well and truly foiled.
The overthrow
This was hardly an overthrow, but Dhoni and Suresh Raina stole it. Both the batsmen were happily settled in their respective creases when Dinda, the bowler, failed to collect cleanly, and the ball rolled onto the adjacent pitch. The batsmen sprinted and were helped by a miss from Robin Uthappa, the wicketkeeper. Eventually this was worth more than just one: Dhoni got the strike back and smacked the remaining two balls of the innings for a four and a six.
The let-off
Allan Border won't be proud of Uthappa. In the first over of the chase, the ball slipped out of Ravindra Jadeja's hand, and bounced outside the cut strip. Uthappa started charging towards it, but then let it go. Bowling the first over of an innings for the first time in IPL, Jadeja wasn't complaining. When England toured India last year, Jonathan Trott hit a similar delivery for four in the Nagpur Test. It had slipped out of the hand of … Jadeja.

Sidharth Monga is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo