Gayle too strong for lacklustre Indians
A blistering 89 from man of the tournament Chris Gayle was the bedrock of Royal Challengers Bangalore's comfortable victory against Sachin Tendulkar's disappointing Mumbai Indians in Chennai.
Mumbai's strange decision to bowl first, and on a pitch where the side batting first tends to win, backfired as Gayle set about their attack in typically brutal fashion. After just one over the score was 27-0, and although Mumbai bowled and fielded well in the second half of RCB's innings to peg them back to a manageable 185 for 4, Sachin's team was never in the match.
The Indians' innings fizzled out and the last few overs reeked of anticlimax, with many Sachin fans having left the stadium after their hero was stumped - a rare dismissal for the Little Master - for 40.
Royal Challengers will now meet reigning champions Chennai Super Kings in Saturday's final, and with Gayle in such blistering form, you'd be brave to back Dhoni's Super Kings.
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A pretty important win for us, it will boost our run-rate and we may need that to come into the equation. It's a bit of a surprise to be honest [the knock], but you need to keep trusting yourself. Twenty20 cricket is a funny game. Virat has got his whole cricketing life ahead of him and I'd say that to any youngster. It was a nicer batting track today, we felt it's a small ground and we might be able to make up for any slow overs early on. Marsh has also turned into a dominator. Once we got to the 10-11 over mark, the track had settled down and it was an intentional decision to keep going hard. We've got to win our next game, we've taken about half a run up in the net run-rate."