A night for the bowlers

Twenty20 cricket has a tendency to lavish treats upon the batsmen. But Brendon McCullum is denied his down-the-track donuts. The leg-side lollies Dwayne Smith loves aren't in stock either. And all Suresh Raina gets are back-of-a-length sour grapes. At the end of six overs of Powerplay, Chennai Super Kings are an anemic 16 for 1.

Zaheer Khan and Shahbaz Nadeem are responsible for this prickly welcome in Raipur. A 36-year-old seamer ambling up to the crease, every measured step a guard against aggravating old injuries, and a wispy left-arm spinner with nothing mysterious about him - hardly the most threatening sights in cricket. But they can certainly be suffocating. Ball after ball, in the corridor or at the hips, at varying lengths to force the batsman to make his own pace and take undue risks.

McCullum tries to disrupt this rhythm. The reverse scoop doesn't connect. He does not want to charge as he is worried about the pitch's two-paced nature. Five balls faced, no runs scored, final over of field restrictions. Scoreboard pressure encroaches into his plans and the final ball from Zaheer is tamely tapped into the hands of mid-off. Smith, meanwhile, is 5 off 15.

An up-and-down pitch requires recalibration. The focus has to shift from boundaries to singles and twos. To exploiting angles and running fielders ragged, instead of overwhelming the bowler. Super Kings haven't made that switch. They've lost Smith as well. Raina miscalculates and pulls the trigger too soon. They are 46 for 3 in the 10th over and can't gather any momentum. Only frustration.

MS Dhoni walks in. He is a good judge of situations. He knows this is a 140-150 game that needs to be set up by a 40-ball 50. So dinks and dabs and nudges get him going and he forms a 37-run association with Faf du Plessis, another player who can ignore pressure and play normal cricket. But they can't outsmart the consequences of that slow start.

Du Plessis drags on in the 16th over. Super Kings have to wait till the 18th for their 100. Dhoni's 10 off 17 increases with a six and two fours but 27 off 24 doesn't look much better.

The gremlins that have raided the Daredevils batting haven't been able to affect their bowling. Their 72 wickets is the second-best tally this season, and so is their economy of 7.8. Imran Tahir and Amit Mishra had worked round the clock to keep the team competitive early on, but neither were on show in Raipur. They did have Zaheer, though, who had no problems putting in some overtime. The most economical spell of the season - 4-1-9-2 - underpinned by his leading the death-overs squeeze.

His first ball of a new spell, in the 19th over, removes Dhoni and puts him on a hat-trick. He concedes only four runs after that. His job isn't over yet.

Two-ODI old Gurinder Sandhu, who had cost 11 runs in his previous over, is given the ball to finish things off and Zaheer is by his ear, presumably explaining the plan for all six deliveries and pointing out loopholes in Pawan Negi and Ravindra Jadeja's techniques. Short balls and yorkers ensue as the final over yields only five runs. The batsmen troop off, JP Duminy leads a group of his men and Zaheer has his hand around Sandhu's shoulder with a proud smile on his face.

Raipur, which is over 1000 kilometres away from Delhi, hosting Daredevils' games is odd. Seventh-placed Daredevils restricting table-toppers Super Kings to their lowest total in three years - 119 for 6 is odd too. Something that should follow in that trend, but never does in the IPL, is the inevitability of a catch being put down.

R Ashwin bowls, perhaps, an entire spell while warming up. His rhythm is good once, the dip is there and the turn is mouth-watering. He begins his second over with one pitching on leg stump from around the wicket that nearly frisks Yuvraj Singh's edge as it turns square.

Daredevils had lost two early wickets. A batting line-up that has lacked in confidence is still 67 runs away from target. Ashwin lures the set batsman Shreyas Iyer into a hoick. The ball soars towards deep midwicket, where Mohit Sharma settles beneath it. He looks nervous about the height it has reached. The night sky is quite clear, though, so he shouldn't have had much trouble tracking it. But he does. The catch isn't taken, Super Kings lose their chance to smother the opposition and Shreyas makes an unbeaten match-winning 70 off 49 balls.

Small chases require big hands too. Especially from an in-form top-order batsman. Shreyas obliged with his fourth fifty of the season that shut Super Kings out.

Daredevils understood his preference for orthodox strokes and an uncomplicated gameplan and made him their opener. But the most striking aspect of his batting is his timing. Evidence for which are a caressed six over long-off and a nudge for four through midwicket in a 20-run over from Ishwar Pandey.

He's breezed past his original target of 300 runs this season, amended it to 400 and now has achieved that too. Mumbai's highest scorer in the Ranji Trophy, 419 runs now in the IPL to justify his price tag - Rs 2.6 crore (approx US $433,000) made him the highest paid uncapped player of the auction. Expectations are already rising for him - Duminy sees him playing for India in the next two to three years.