IPL 2018: Five times tailenders won the match for their team

#3 Umesh Yadav: RPS vs KKR, IPL 2016

Yadav hit a thumping six into the crowd to take his team home

The ninth edition of the IPL started off in a mundane fashion. One-sided matches marked the first few days of the tournament. However, the two games on April 24 proved to be the turning point of the season. Both went down the wire to decide the winner 40th over of the match.

The evening game was played between MS Dhoni’s Rising Pune Supergiant and Gambhir’s Kolkata Knight Riders. The latter won the toss and chose to field first on a slow wicket. Riding on the back of a half-century from Ajinkya Rahane and a 12-ball-23 by Dhoni, RPS put up a strong total of 160 at the end of 20 overs.

The opening pair of Gambhir and Robin Uthappa endured a rare failure as the former made just 11 runs and the latter fell for a duck. Suryakumar Yadav and Yusuf Pathan steadied the ship in the middle overs but were unable to conserve their wickets to see their team through in the final overs of the game. The home side kept chipping away at the wickets till finally, KKR needed 7 runs off the last over with just three wickets in hand.

Thisara Perera was entrusted with the ball in the pressurizing situation. He stepped up in the first two deliveries by giving away just two runs and scalping the wicket of Chawla. It seemed as if the Sri Lankan would manage to hold the fort together for his team.

However, it was not to be.

Umesh Yadav is fun to watch when he has the willow in his hands: he swings for the fences on every delivery and tends to miss the ball nine times out of ten. However, this instance proved to be the one other time!

The fast-bowler had given away 16 runs in just two overs earlier in the day. However, Yadav made up for his performance with the ball when he smoked a six over long-on to win the game for his side.