Yash Dayal’s final over vs CSK - A redemption arc that no one saw coming

No matter the mountains scaled and the skies conquered earlier in the game, cricket can change in an over’s time and last night’s clash between RCB and CSK remained a blazing testimony to the aforementioned adage. What looked like an easy getaway for CSK after MS Dhoni smacked an absolute banger on the very first ball of that last over soon turned into a living nightmare, spewing spiders, darkness, wickets and dot balls, the latter two being the scarier ones.

As we celebrate RCB’s triumph over CSK that propelled them to the IPL 2024 playoffs , Yash Dayal conjured sheer magic in the final over that starred some high-octane drama, an incredible maximum and a humdinger comeback that would be etched in golden letters in the history of IPL. Here’s a quick glance at those miraculous six balls that needed nerves of steel from Dayal to get RCB the big ticket.

CSK needed 17 off the final six to qualify and Dayal wanted to start it off with a yorker and it went terribly wrong for him. A full-toss eventually was put out of the park by Dhoni as the ball sailed a staggering 110 m to leave the RCB fans on the edge of their seats.

Dayal seemed unfazed in the face of terror as he chose to walk down a similar path in the following delivery. The only modification that he pulled off however was dragging the length back enough while bowling from back of his hand to offer a bait to MS. Trying to pick the bones out of that one after spotting that in the slot, Mahi went powering through. Much to his shock, the ball caught the edge of his bat and went miles up in the air. Almost after an eternity of suspension in thin air the ball came crashing down as Swapnil Singh kept his nerves and eventually latched onto the catch to send CSK spiralling into precarity.

It was still 11 off four needed and despite the illustrious reckoning of Shardul Thakur’s hard-hitting, he was left confounded by Yash Dayal who managed to produce another slower one that was angling away from the former. The following delivery saw the line coming in closer to the stumps and a full-blown bat-swing from Thakur could only take him as far as the short third fielder.

With Jadeja on strike, CSK needed 10 off two and Dayal was breathing ice at that clutch juncture. Keeping the angle intact, he got the ball to drift away from a heavily wielding Jadeja and DK snaffled it up with the celebrations starting to unfurl in the dugout. With the need of just one legal ball to be delivered, Dayal wheeled in and conjured an identical delivery to the last one that left Jaddu swivelling in thin air and to despair as RCB had stormed into the play-offs from practically a wasteland.