The Super Over is still in its infancy in Twenty20 cricket, and while teams will eventually develop different methods to tackle the six-ball tie-breaker, the consensus among players here is that Kolkata Knight Riders captain Brendon McCullum goofed up by handing the ball to Ajantha Mendis.

While Chris Gayle and the skipper had put a respectable 15 on the board against left-arm pacer Kamran Khan, Yusuf Pathan swatted two sixes and a boundary to finish the game with two balls to spare.

“I think it was a mistake asking Ajantha to bowl,” says his Sri Lanka team mate and Mumbai Indians pacer Dilhara Fernando. “A pace bowler is always a better choice to bowl in these conditions, they are a bit harder to hit anyway.”

While Harbhajan Singh doesn’t rule out the possibility of spinners contributing, he admits that “it gets really difficult when the batsman is only looking to hit.”

Shaun Pollock, meanwhile, felt that the target was extremely defendable, but “when you get hit for a six off the first ball, things become really easy.”

Incidentally, Chris Gayle took 22 runs off Daniel Vettori — arguably the world’s best T20 bowler — in a Super Over while playing for West Indies against New Zealand.

Shane Warne, who tossed the ball to pacer Kamran, admitted that he too had considered bowling either himself or Yusuf Pathan. “But the conditions were different towards the end of the match. The ground was very wet and it was difficult to hold the ball, which is why I decided against using spin,” Warne said.

... contd.