Top 5 performances in IPL 10 so far that ended up in a losing cause

#5 Manish Pandey’s  81 vs Mumbai Indians

It was the 7th match of the season as Mumbai Indians played host to Kolkata Knight Riders and asked them to bat first after winning the toss. Gautam Gambhir and Chris Lynn started off on in the fourth gear and the score reached 44 in just 4 overs. But Gambhir departed followed by Robin Uthappa in the 5th over. Lynn too was dismissed soon and they found themselves in a spot of bother.

Manish Pandey, the first ever Indian centurion of IPL walked in at number 4 and did the job of reconstruction. There wasn’t much support from the other end and he was forced to fight the lone battle. He kept going after the bowlers and finished unbeaten at 81 off just 47 balls with 5 fours and as many sixes and KKR were powered to 7/178 at the end of 20 overs.

In reply, MI had a great start as the openers added 65 runs but they lost their way after a series of wickets. Nitish Rana made a superb fifty and brought MI closer. 30 runs were required off the last 2 overs where Rana and Hardik Pandya collected 19 runs off the penultimate over from Ankit Rajpoot. Rana lost his wicket in that over and it was down to Hardik to score 11 runs in the final over.

KKR fielders succumbed to the pressure and first Suryakumar Yadav misfielded an easy one that went for a boundary and then Rishi Dhawan dropped a skier, Hardik was the one who had his luck by his side on both occasions. He smashed a four off the second last ball and took his team past the line with 4 wickets in hand. Pandey was left stranded as his brilliant effort was wasted by a poor fielding performance from KKR.