Having seen Ishant for quite some time now, I have a pet theory.
Somebody has told him that there are two kinds of bowlers - ones who create wickets for others to take and ones who take them, reap the rewards so to speak. With his potent in-dipping deliveries and awkward bounce allied nippy pace he belonged to the former group originally. Halfway into his fledgling career the leg cutter started making an appearance. Thereafter there was this mysterious loss of pace. And guess what - Ishant no longer had that nip back into the right hander which left Ponting red in the face and frothing at the mouth because the ball had for the nth time passed between the bat and his body, shaving nothing but air.
One can only be what one is built to be. Ishant is another Srinath or another Flintoff. They are pressure creators. And a team needs all kinds of performers. He just needs to get his in-dipper in place and at pace. The rest will follow. His newly learned leg cutter should be a surprise weapon - sort of like a coup de grace. Not one to be used every other ball by any means.
Lets put it this way. Chennai were not only the better team yesterday. Dhoni was the better captain too. I know a lot of people would focus on having that straight mid off as well as a long off. And yes, nothing succeeds like success. But that is not what ultimately won the game for Chennai. The little moves - such as investing trust in Murali even when the great off spinner was not having a great tournament, having fielders such as Badri and Raina at the right spots almost throughout the match and razor sharp wicket keeping allied with intelligent use of his part timer (again Raina) - those were the ones that won Chennai the game.
At the point that Pollard got out, the MI would have required a combination of West Indian voodoo and Indian mantra-tantra to get them across the finish line.
There is also a lesson in this. It is that it is very essential for the captain to sit down and discuss permutations and combinations and probabilities and decisions to be taken in key moments with his vice captain as well as the coach. Tendulkar came out in the post match press conference and said that Pollard was held back a bit too long. What does that imply? That he would have preferred to send Pollard in early? Perhaps so, we may never know. But I am happy that Tendulkar thinks that Pollard should have gotten in early. On the Pollard batting slot, I have heard a lot of people say that he ought to come ahead of Duminy. I will go one better. I would say that he ought to have come in ahead of even Rayudu. Or at the very least before Saurabh Tiwary.
Mumbai's fielding and its dependence on five specialist bowlers to do the job perhaps held them back. I thought somebody like Jayasuriya with the ability to roll his arm over may have made sense, but then you know what people say about hindsight.
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