Amla's high-five
Batting was hard work on the Mohali pitch in the afternoon for Barbados Tridents and Hobart Hurricanes and the surface was not expected to change. Shoaib Malik had said that rotating the strike on this pitch was paramount. But Hashim Amla probably misheard him because he came out all guns blazing and scored 20 off 13 balls in the first four overs. Then he raised it to another level. Thisara Perera came in to bowl the fifth and he was scythed, walloped, thumped, smacked and sliced for five consecutive boundaries. In no time, Amla moved to 40 off 18.
The fielding #not
Parvinder Awana was flummoxed by the spinning ball once at backward point. Stiaan van Zyl had sliced the flighted delivery from Glenn Maxwell and it flew in the air towards Awana, who got the body behind the line of the ball, but did not account for the spin. The ball hit the turf and turned away from him, running to the boundary and leaving him embarrassed. He tried to make up in the same over by diving to his right, but missed the ball again. Fortunately, Virender Sehwag was behind him. Maxwell could only smile.
The bearded offspinner
Second time in three matches, Hashim Amla was asked to bowl his variety of offspin but it was at a point when he couldn't have altered the course of the match. He bowled one ball, doubling his tally to two balls in T20s. Maybe a longer spell could have given a better measure of the talent.
The helping hand I
Wriddhiman Saha has spent countless years being labelled as the best wicketkeeper-batsman in India but it's only during the widely-televised events like the IPL or CLT20 that he gets the exposure. Watching him keep wickets is a throwback to the classical style: quick feet movement and low hands. Twice, he was quick to move to the leg side and whip the bails to give Akshar Patel two wickets and then in the 19th over, he dived full length to his left to pluck a sharp catch to give Anureet his third.
The helping hand II
Dane Vilas had to pitch in as the captain for Cobras as Justin Ontong sat out with an injury but at the toss, he was soon about to realise that leading a team on the field was not the only job requirement. Faced with a camera, Vilas remembered the players who were not in the team, but not the replacements. Fortunately for him, the experienced George Bailey was around to remind him of the name he was missing - Rory Kleinveldt.