Only in the IPL, Only in India

I'm not particularly fond of the uber-commercial Indian Premier League, but it does occasionally throw up some incredible cricketing stories. One such came in the recent Rajasthan vs. Kolkata game. At the death, with Ganguly going well and Kolkata apparently cruising, Shane Warne (Rajasthan's captain) brought on to bowl... Kamran Khan. Who is he? The 18-year old son of a woodcutter from Azamgarh, a place that has been in the news for all the wrong reasons of late. Someone who is yet to play a single first-class game, but can apparently bowl at 140 kph. There he was, in distant Cape Town, up against the veteran former Indian captain, only 7 runs needed by Kolkata from the last over with 4 wickets in hand. Who would have given him a chance? Yet at the end of those 6 balls, Ganguly had been dismissed and only 6 runs scored. Kamran finished with figures of 4-0-18-3; Warne, arguably the greatest bowler of all time, managed 4-0-25-2 in comparison.

That wasn't the end though. This being the IPL after all, ties are unacceptable. So we have the spectacle of a "Super Over"; each side gets to bat for one extra over and the one scoring more runs wins. So whom did Rajasthan choose to bowl this all-or-nothing over? The legendary Shane Warne, surely? Nope; Kamran Khan. Up against the fearsome duo of Brendon McCullum and Chris Gayle, two of the hardest hitters around, he managed to restrict them to 'just' 15 runs. Yusuf Pathan then came out and finished things off in 4 balls: 6,2,6,4. Yusuf was man of the match (he'd scored 42 earlier as well), but surely Kamran was a strong contender too. Warne said afterwards: "I thought about Yusuf and myself for that Super Over but I went with Kamran and I thought he bowled a very good over". No small praise, coming from a man with 708 test wickets. Two years ago, who could have even imagined a 39-year old legend from Melbourne playing on the same team as an 18-year old rookie from Azamgarh, let alone all this drama? Now that's what I call awesome; and despite the physical location of the events, this story was truly "made in India".