McCullum's blazing innings sets the tone for IPL

New Zealand's opening explosive batsman Brendon McCullum sets the tone of Indian Premier League’s opening match against the Royal Challengers Bangalore by smashing an unbeaten 158, the highest individual score so far in Twenty20 cricket.

A 55,000 start studded crowd at the Chinnaswamy Stadium and a smashing innings full of high-end boundaries certainly signals a new era of world cricket with full of entertainment; another transformation of the Game has been waiting ever since. However, there is much to wait for to count the success of the format.

Playing for the Kolkata Knight Riders the Kiwi opener here led his team with none other than skipper Sourav Ganguly played a memorable innings of 158 off just 73 balls (10-4s, 13-6s), which helped Knight Riders to amass a huge total of 3-222 from their 20 overs.

McCullum, who also keeps wickets for New Zealand, here as an opener for Kolkata team played an exceptional innings making partnership with all four batsman that batted for the team. For the opening slot with Ganguly the duo raised 61 before Ganguly departed for just 10 runs.

He also added 51 for the second wicket with Australian skipper Ricky Ponting, 60 for the third wicket with David Hussey and another half century stand with Pakistani Mohammed Hafeez (5 not out).

In reply, Bangalore Royal Challengers with the likes of Rahul Dravid as captain, Paceman Zaheer Khan and Australians Cameron White and Ashley Noffke bundled out for a disastrous 82.

The batsmen of reputation like Rahul Dravid, Wasim Jaffer, Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher, Cameron White, and Indian Under-19 skipper Virat Kohli perished under some excellent bowling performance by Ajiit Agarkar (3-25), debutant Ashok Dinda (2) and Sourav Ganguly.

The 45-day tournament will have 59 matches, with the final slated for June 1 in Mumbai.

Today’s Match

The next game on the card is between the Delhi Daredevils and Rajasthan Royals on Saturday evening. The match is scheduled to begin at around 8.30 p.m.

However, Delhi cricket lovers will miss international players like A.B. de Villiers, Shoaib Malik, Mohammed Asif, Tillekeratne Dilshan and Abdur Razzak in the Delhi team, and Graeme Smith, Younis Khan, Kamran Akmal, Sohail Tanvir, Morne Morkel and Dimitri Mascarenhas in the Rajasthan team due to their ongoing domestic and international matches.

Delhi Daredevils: Virender Sehwag (Capt.), Gautam Gambhir, Manoj Tiwary, Daniel Vettori, Dinesh Karthik, Glenn McGrath, Farveez Maharoof, Pradeep Sangwan, Brett Geeves, Rajat Bhatia, Shikhar Dhawan, Yo Mahesh, Mithun Manhas, Mayank Tehlan, Amit Mishra, Tejasvi Yadav and Yogesh Nagar.

Rajasthan Royals: Shane Warne (Capt.), Yusuf Pathan, Mohammad Kaif, Darren Lehmann, Munaf Patel, Justin Langer, Shane Watson, Siddharth Trivedi, Taruwar Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, Pankaj Singh, Swapnil Asnodkar, Neeraj Patel, Mahesh Rawat, Sumit Khatri, Dinesh Salunkhe, Jaydev Shah, Aditya Angle, Parag More and Anup Revandkar.