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IPL 3: Sachin wins another one for Mumbai!

Mumbai Indians continued with their bullish charge, beating Super Kings by five wickets.

Vineet Sharma/Zeecric.com
Mumbai: Mumbai Indians continued with their bullish charge ahead in the Indian Premier League, winning another consecutive match, beating Chennai Super Kings by five wickets. Sachin Tendulkar kept his promise with the home crowd, slamming a super fifty to stamp his authority on a closely fought match. Hitting the tournament’s 200th six, he got out after hitting his highest T20 score of seventy two runs to a change in spell by MS Dhoni, who brought in old warhorse Lakshmipathy Balaji to get a needed break. Alas! All was in vain for Dhoni as Mumbai not just crush thier chances of breaking the losing jix, they also went on top of the IPl Points Table. Mumbai Indians had started their run chase with the opening duo of Shikhar Dhawan and Tendulkar taming the bowlers with a flurry of fours and sixes, the former slamming his fifty in no time. He was however, scalped by Jakati with a nicely flighted delivery at fifty six. Sensing a window of opportunity, Muralitharan spun into action immediately and got Saurabh Tiwary plumb in front of the wickets. However, skipper Sachin had other plans and his sublime form flew all over the park, with the Mumbaikars being treated to some special pyrotechnics. On a winning song from a couple of matches, Mumbai surely gate-crashed Chennai’s efforts earlier in the evening, marking their third loss on trot. The Super Kings were finally back into the thick of scoring runs with Suresh Raina’s 83* cracker of an innings, along with S Badrinath’s fifty at the other end. They set a solid 181-run target for Tendulkar’s squad to chase at the Brabourne Stadium.Scorecard: Mumbai Indians Vs Chennai Super Kings» Harbhajan Singh had sounded the war-gong for Mumbai with the prized scalp of ‘Big Mat’ Hayden (20 off 12), his nemesis of many years. This was followed-up with Ryan McLaren’s uprooting of Parthiv Patel’s stumps. With two top order batsmen showing their back to the ground in the initial phase, Chennai were in damage-control mode. And damage-control they did! With fours and sixes flowing like milk in the farms of Holland, the Mumbai crowd was in for a treat, albeit from the opposition’s efforts.Chennai were buoyed by the joining of skipper MS Dhoni, who was out from the past two weeks due to an elbow injury. Mumbai floated in the same squad from the last game, but the gutsy captain will now have to rethink his game-plan for some instant success or the ignonimy of an ouster looms large.