The loss of Mitchell Johnson to a rib injury had left Kings XI Punjab's bowling looking a little

suspect ahead of their Champions T20 opener, but it proved a bit of a blessing in disguise for
them, with his replacement playing a crucial hand in an five-wicket win over Hobart Hurricanes.
With the four-foreigner limit leaving no room for him in Kings XI's star-studded line-up, Thisara
Perera didn't play a single game for them during their 2014 IPL campaign. With Johnson's
absence giving him an opportunity, Perera grabbed it, taking two wickets in a three-over spell in
which he conceded less than a run a ball before coming in to bat in a thorny situation and scoring
an unbeaten 20-ball 35 that steered Kings XI to a win with 14 balls remaining.
The margin of victory looked fairly wide in the end, but it could have gone either way when
Kings XI were 51 for 4 in the eighth over, chasing 147. This, though, was where the quality and
depth of their batting came to the fore, with Glenn Maxwell playing strokes that belied a twopaced pitch on his way to a 25-ball 43 and George Bailey showing a cool head that his Big Bash
League franchise could have done with during their innings, in putting on an unbroken 69 with
Perera.
During the IPL, Kings XI had won six out of seven matches batting second, and had chased three
190-plus targets successfully. But on a greenish Mohali pitch where the back-of-a-length ball
behaved a touch unpredictably - moving sideways when new, stopping on the batsmen later on,
and often bouncing more than expected - their top order were quickly in trouble. Virender
Sehwag's first-ball dismissal owed more to his impetuosity than to the conditions, but
Wriddhiman Saha, David Miller and Manan Vohra were all discomfited by the extra bounce, and
ended up skying catches to mid-on or mid-off while going hard at length balls.
Under these circumstances, Maxwell's innings showcased his rare talent, as he somehow found
ways to slap the seamers inside-out or loft them back over their heads, while also playing one of
his trademark reverse-sweeps against the legspinner Cameron Boyce.
It was an over from Boyce that reversed the momentum of the game back towards Kings XI,
immediately after Maxwell had edged Evan Gulbis to the keeper. Perera found the third-man
boundary via a streaky edge before hitting Boyce back over his head for six. Bailey then found
the gap between deep midwicket and long-on when Boyce dropped his last ball short - 18 came
off that over, and it left Kings XI needing 50 off 48.
Bailey and Perera kept their heads, attacked the loose balls - which for Perera was mostly
whatever he could swing over the arc between midwicket and long-on - and the win, when it was
achieved, came with time and wickets to spare, Bailey clouting Gulbis for successive fours in the
18th over.
Hurricanes' innings, after they had been sent in to bat, lacked a sustained period when the
batsmen were on top of the bowlers. Ben Dunk and Aiden Blizzard, the two left-handers in their
top three, struggled for timing early on and got themselves out just as they were beginning to
look comfortable. Perera dismissed both of them, and both times the extra bounce caused them to
mishit length or back-of-a-length balls, to deep and short cover respectively.

At 78 for 4 in the 13th over, Hurricanes seemed to be going nowhere when Jonathan Wells
joined Travis Birt. They proceeded to add 52, with the left-handed Birt flourishing while hitting
the legspinner Karanveer Singh with the spin and the right-handed Wells cutting and driving
fluently through the off side. Just when the partnership was threatening to take Hurricanes to a
biggish total, however, Wells ran himself out, and Kings XI tightened the screws once again,
conceding only 14 runs off the last 14 balls of the innings.