Royals date for Mumbai

IPL champions Mumbai Indians earned themselves the chance of a title double after they booked a berth in the final of the CLT20 with a six-wicket win over Trinidad & Tobago Red Force at the Kotla here on Saturday. MI, champions in 2011, rode on opener Dwayne Smith’s half-century and handy contributions from all their batsmen to chase down the 154-run target in 19.1 overs that put them in Sunday’s final against the Rajasthan Royals here. T&T spinner Sunil Narine delivered yet another impressive performance for the losers, 3/17 in four overs, and gave MI some nervous moments but failed to stop them from crossing the line. Mumbai’s start was again shouldered by Smith whose power hitting set them on course but it was milestone man Sachin Tendulkar who brought the crowd to their feet during his 31-ball inning that fetched 35 runs and came to an end on the last ball of the 11th over. Slow to start with, the Master Blaster sent the crowd into raptures with two successive sixes off leg-spinner Yannick Ottley in the sixth over. The 40-year-old had two hits to the boundary too even as he crosses an aggregate of 50,000 in List A, fisrt class and T20 cricket in the course of his innings. The first wicket stand of 90 in 11 overs was the kind of start MI needed but after Tendulkar was caught behind off Lendl Simmons, MI had a brief nervous period of play as Narine snapped up Ambati Raydu and dangermsan Smith. (59, 38b 7x4, 2x6) to briefly threaten to take the game away from MI. Rohit Sharma and Dinesh Karthik took MI within 17 runs of a victory in the last three overs. But Narine continued to fox the MI batsmen and bowled Sharma in his last over, the 18th of the innings. However, the batsmen knocked off the remaining 14 runs with five balls to spare. Earlier, opener Evin Lewis continued his fine form for Trinidad & Tobago Red Force but the other batstmen barring Otley failed to turn the start provided by the 21-year-old into something bigger as the West Indian side finished on 153/5. Nathan Coulter-Nile, for the second successive game did his restricting act, with 1/20. Kieron Pollard and Pragyan Ojha, with an under six economy, supported Coulter-Nile so well that MI gave themselves a chaseable target. Lewis was off to a streaky start with a boundary that came off the edge off his bat but delighted the decent turnout here with some fluent strokeplay comprising six boundaries and four sixes amidst fancy fireworks in a 46-ball 62. By the time Lewis departed on the first ball of the 14th over, quite uncharacteristically giving a return catch to Pollard on a delivery that looked to have stopped a bit, T&T were 93/3. While Lewis soon got into his rhythm after the third-ball edge, slamming Mitchell Johnson for a six over third man on the fourth ball of the innings, his partner and last match’s hero Lendl Simmons was caught at the boundary by Dwayne Smith in the second over by Harbhajan Singh.

SCORECARD Trinidad: L. Simmons c Smith b Harbhajan 0, E. Lewis c & b Pollard 62, D. Bravo st Karthik b Ojha 14, K. Ottley (not out) 41, D. Ramdin b Johnson 9, N. Pooran c Rayudu b Coulter-Nile 15, N. Stewart (not out) 2. Extras (lb 5, w 5) 10, Total (for 5 wkts, in 20 overs) 153. FoW: 1-13, 2-61, 3-93, 4-111, 5-148. Bowling: Johnson 3-0-31-1 (2w), Harbhajan 4-0-35-1, Dhawan 3-0-30-0 (1w), Coulter-Nile 4-0-20-1 (1w), Pollard 3-0-16-1 (1w), Ojha 3-0-16-1. Mumbai Indians: D.R. Smith b Narine 59, S. Tendulkar c Ramdin b Simmons 35, A. Rayudu c Ramdin b Narine 0, R. Sharma b Narine 25, D. Karthik not out 33, K. Pollard not out 2, Extras: (lb1, w1, nb1) 3, Total: (for 4 wkts; in 19.1 overs) 157. FoW: 1-90, 2-91, 3-96, 4-138 Bowling: Badree 4-0-25-0, Rampaul 4-0-29-0, Ottley 3-0-38-0, Narine 4-0-17-3 (1nb), Simmons 2.1-0-27-1 (1w), Stewart 2-0-20-0