The much hyped and long-awaited for franchise cricket league christened Indian Premier League finally was declared open on April 18 with the first match taking place in Chinnaswamy Stadium hosted by the home team of Bangalore. The opening of the 44-day long tournament with 59 matches was inaugurated with pomp and show which is unparalleled in any cricket event till date. NFL cheerleaders, laser show, song performances marked the opening of the event. All the eight team captains came on to the main stage and gave their signatures for the event to begin. Speeches from ICC and BCCI leaders also were presented.
As far as the match is concerned, it was equally exciting and engrossing. The fixture was between the Kolkata Knight Riders, the team owned by Shahrukh Khan aka “King Khan” of the Indian Film Industry and the Bangalore Royal Challengers team owned by the liquor baron Vijay Mallaya. The Challengers won the toss and chose to field first. It was being commented that Mallaya has chosen a test cricket team for a Twenty20 series but he is confident. However the pitch seemed green and was expected to benefit the Challengers.
The match opened with the Knight Rider’s captain Sourav Ganguly and Brendon McCullum coming in the field to face the attack of Praveen Kumar. The first over went pretty silently but when Zaheer Khan came in for bowling, McCullum started his fiery batting which came as a complete surprise. This man McCullum gave a one man show in the match and scored spectacular high-rise shots. The other batsmen seemed like accessories just to support the non-strikers end while McCullum kept on hitting his great shots and remained unbeaten at 158 when his team scored 222 runs. Ganguly, Ponting, Hussey and Hafeez got the chance to play but could not score a lot runs.
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