Saturday, April 9, 2011

Chennai Super Kings triumph over Kolkata in thrilling IPL opener


(CNN) -- MS Dhoni continued his winning streak after guiding the Chennai Super Kings to a nail biting victory over Kolkata Knight Riders in the opening clash of the Indian Premier League.
The seven week 20-over tournament offers yet more action for the cricket-loving Indian public after Dhoni led them to a World Cup triumph on home soil less than a week ago.
And he masterminded an opening win in Chennai as Kolkata failed to record the four runs they need off the final delivery of the match to lose by two runs.
Batting first, Chennai made 153-4 off their 20 overs. Srikkanth Anirudha got them off to a fast start as he smashed 64 off just 55 deliveries.
Indian pair Suresh Raini and Dhoni then added valuable runs at the end of the innings, finishing with 33 and 29 respectively, as the Super Kings posted a challenging total.
An opening stand of 64 between Manvinder Bisla and South African Jacques Kallis looked to have put Kolkata in the driving seat but when Kallis went for 54 their innings faltered.
English batsman Eoin Morgan was stumped for just six runs but Manoj Tiwary got Kolkata back on track with a quick fire 27 runs, including two sixes, before he was stumped by Dhoni off the bowling of Randiv.
The Knight Riders needed nine runs from the final over but lost Laxmi Shukla off the second ball. Rajat Bhatia was charged with hitting a boundary off the final ball to win but Kolkata could only manage a leg bye.
After the game Dhoni told reporters: "It was a first game with a new team, and when you get a new car you want to break it in, but you don't want to break it. Even if we did not win this game, we would have got a lot out of it."
Meanwhile, the 147-year-old Wisden Almanack -- known as the cricketers' bible -- has strengthened its social media presence by joining Facebook.
The historic publication joined Twitter in December posting: "A humble 147-year-old takes its first tentative steps into the blogosphere. Any older Twitterers out there?"
Their new editor, Lawrence Booth has been tasked with developing their digital presence, and Wisden has already chalked up a quintuple century -- in Facebook 'likes'.

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