Delhi lost both their openers in the first over of the Indian Premier League’s first semi-final, but their shoulders didn’t drop. On the contrary, Virender Sehwag and Tillakaratne Dilshan launched an audacious counter-attack that took the team to 153, a defendable total by this tournament’s standards.

Their bowling had been stingy through the tournament, and there was a spring in the step when they walked on to the field.

The good cheer, however, didn’t last too long — the first six balls of the chase gave a taste of things to come as Adam Gilchrist hit Dirk Nannes for five consecutive boundaries. And those six deliveries were just a trailer of the carnage that followed.

Ashish Nehra was smashed for a boundary and a six in his second over, while Pradeep Sangwan’s left-arm medium pace was dismissed for two boundaries and a six.

The Deccan Chargers captain brought up his half-century off 17 deliveries — the fastest in IPL’s 116-match history, and the fifth-fastest in Twenty20. He hit eight fours and two sixes to get there, ensuring Hyderabad were, incredibly, going at twice the required run-rate. He drove along the ground and uppishly over long-off, he pulled and hooked, flicked and cut with such ferocity that the match was over and done with by the time he departed.

Shahid Afridi’s one-day record for the fastest century — off 37 deliveries — was very much under threat for a while, before a few dot balls against Dilshan slowed Gilchrist down, a phrase that seems out of place while describing an innings that fetched 85 runs off 35 deliveries.

... contd.