May 15, 2011
In the last five matches, Valthaty got good starts of 33, 21, 23, 14, 17 but was not able to capitalize on them. Finally he got a big score today and also grabbed the orange cap from the hurricane of the tournament Chris Gayle. He scored 62 off 50 balls to reach 438, only a couple ahead of Gayle. Since the next game of KXIP is against RCB, it would be interesting to see whether he will be able to hold on to it. On that day, 4 players; 2 from each side; would be eyeing the orange cap. Shaun Marsh from KXP & Gayle and Virat Kohli, all have a total runs score above 400 and are not much behind.
Valthaty had come very near to the orange cap once before. He had equal runs to Tendulkar at that time but the no. of not outs played spoilsport. At that time both were equal at 201 but Tendulkar had 3 not outs as against Valthaty's 1, and thus retained the prestigious cap.
This time around, he has a great chance of holding onto it as none of the top contenders for the orange cap have a match before his team's next match i.e. RCB.
So good luck Valthaty!!
