A quiet day for Chris Gayle

Pulling the plug

A six off the first ball. A four to follow that. Tillakaratne Dilshan was batting like his numbers against West Indies suggested he would. Coming into the game, he averaged 55.56 in eight matches. But like a party that was shut down before it could get raucous, Dilshan's innings came to a grinding halt when umpire Johan Cloete gave the nod to a vociferous lbw appeal from Carlos Brathwaite. The ball was angled into the pads and it appeared to be missing leg stump comfortably and the cool kids were none too happy with that. A brand new redhead, Dilshan left shaking his head and his old team-mate Mahela Jayawardene tweeted, "Come on, umps! it's a WC and u have to be better than this."

The slow motion sucker punch

The Dwayne Bravo slower ball has had a grand old run at the IPL, and it keeps embarrassing class batsmen. Today it was Angelo Mathews' turn. Premeditating a lap sweep, the Sri Lanka captain went down on one knee and was face to face with a big old full toss. Mathews, having given up the option of a stable base, could only flail at the ball. The outside edge looped up and fell straight into wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin's gloves. At no point in this sequence did the ball touch the ground.

The anti-climax

Bangalore made no bones about who it was supporting. Their local boy Chris Gayle was in town and every Sri Lankan wicket was cheered with gusto. So it was surprising when a dropped catch that benefited the West Indian team brought out a chorus of boos. Johnson Charles went aerial and Chamara Kapugedera hunted it down from midwicket. It should have been a dolly, but the ball popped in and popped straight out. A crowd that had been screaming "We want Gayle! We want Gayle!" when the chase began without him thought the wicket would bring their hero out. Guess they weren't informed that Gayle had twinged his hamstring and spent too much of the first innings off the field to take strike straight away.

Too much tech

It seemed it was finally time. Andre Fletcher had played a blinder in his stead, but Dushmantha Chameera claimed his outside edge in the 16th over and it seemed like Dinesh Chandimal had pulled off a fine catch. Umpire Cloete gave it out straight away, but his partner at square leg Aleem Dar wanted a second look. Third umpire Simon Fry was in the hot seat and as is the case with catches that die into the fielder's hand, the more camera angles that were used, the more doubts crept in. The replays showed the ball bouncing, a sizeable contingent thought it did so only after settling cleanly into the wicketkeeper's gloves, Fry wasn't among them and ruled not out.

The hometown boy denied

Chris Gayle had called Bangalore his "hometown" after blitzing a century against England and his fans had thronged to the M Chinnaswamy stadium by the hordes to see him and they went back home without getting to watch Gayle bat. The man tried his best though. He was by the boundary, padded up, helmeted and armed with his big bat itching to get on the field and entertain the crowd. He had to be jovially dragged off inside by umpire Ian Gould and feeling a touch guilty, perhaps, Gayle came out sans his gear to wave to salute the crowd and indulge in a few selfies