Will Deccan Chargers make it to finals?

After lying low for three matches, the Deccan Chargers came out in full force on Sunday to maul Mumbai Indians and record their first win of the IPL tournament at the D.Y. Patil Stadium.

After restricting the home side to a modest 154, the Chargers made mockery of the Mumbai total courtesy Adam Gilchrist’s savage 47-ball 109 not out to overhaul the target in just 12 overs without losing a wicket. The win took Deccan Chargers from eighth to sixth on the points table, which has Bangalore and Mumbai languishing at the bottom.

Gilchrist exploded like a dynamite, cracking 10 soaring sixes and nine boundaries to batter the Mumbai bowlers, in the process recording the fastest century in Twenty20 cricket (42 balls). The previous fastest hundred, off 47 balls, was set by Gilly’s teammate Andrew Symonds during the Chargers’ last game against Rajasthan Royals at home last week.

The Australian was in devastating form, striking the ball clean and long from the very beginning to take the game away from Mumbai, whose stand-in captain Shaun Pollock shuffled the bowling pack regularly without much success. With Gilly on fire smashing sixes at will, all the Mumbai fielders could do was fetch the ball from the fence.

The man of the match was modest. “I played according to my instinct,” Gilchrist said, before giving credit to the bowlers. “They did a good job of restricting Mumbai, which made it easy for the batsmen.”