Limited Kings XI befuddled by middle muddle

Two yorkers. One fast, one slow. Both at the base of the stumps. Glenn Maxwell and David Miller gone. It will be tempting to surmise that Dwayne Bravo, rightly being hailed as arguably the best bowler in this IPL, won Gujarat Lions the match in one over, but it is important to also look at events that led to this big over and those that followed it. Kings XI Punjab's Indian batsmen - not one of them is anywhere close to threatening a spot in the Indian T20I side - will have to take a lot of the blame.

M Vijay and Manan Vohra got off to a dream start with the new ball coming on to the bat, when all that was required to do was clear the infield. In T20 cricket, especially on Indian pitches, the bowling side is not overly bothered by these kind of starts, so long as the batsmen are going at under 10 an over. The best bowlers are saved for the overs immediately after the Powerplay. This is when lesser T20 batsmen get stuck.

There is no time for batsmen to relax in a T20 game. If you do have a slow period in the middle, you better trust your game as much as Virat Kohli does, and you better be that good. If you cannot hit boundaries, you should be able to keep working the twos and be able to go at a strike-rate of about 120 before you can open up again. As they got stuck into Sarabjit Ladda and Pradeep Sangwan, Vijay and Vohra took Kings XI to 52 for 0 in six overs. Then, Gujarat Lions went to their best bowlers: Ravindra Jadeja and Bravo.

In the sixth over, Vijay hit his final boundary. Until then Vijay batted beautifully, his flicks languid, his drives free-flowing. Even opponent Aaron Finch said for some time it was beautiful to watch. In T20s, though, there is not much room for the niceties of the high elbow.

Vijay eventually fell in the 11th over, trying to hit Jadeja inside-out - a low-percentage shot unless you are playing with a wet ball or on a perfectly flat surface. Vijay scored 10 off the last 14 balls he faced. Vohra enjoyed some luck in a slow start - he was dropped early by Bravo - but he too relied just on the big shots, and perished to the wily Jadeja. Ajinkya Rahane faces criticism for similar dismissals in T20Is.

By the time Miller and Maxwell came together, Kings XI had fallen behind on a pitch where 190 was about par. They were ideally the men to be doing the big hitting at the end, but were obliged to look for those big ones earlier than they would have wanted. That task was made even more difficult because they came up against Gujarat's best bowler, Bravo.

Just before Miller was done in by the Bravo slower one, the field had changed. Midwicket had gone back, and third man had come in. It was apparent Bravo was going to bowl a slower ball. This was also the last ball of the over. Who knows if, in another circumstance, Miller would have just looked to pick a single? A proper batsman should not be getting so befuddled by a slower ball when it has been telegraphed.

What followed was a reminder that Wriddhiman Saha, despite being a plucky Test batsman and despite one great IPL season, is a limited T20 batsman, especially when the field has been spread out. His 20 off 25 was one of the prime reasons Kings XI fell 30 short of a par score. They now have a problem at hand. Their Indian batsmen will have to pull their weight, and their two big star batsmen will have to pull themselves out of an ordinary run of form.