Mike Hussey cracked the fastest century in Twenty20 cricket history as Chennai Super Kings pulled off a comfortable 33-run victory over Kings XI Punjab in the Indian Premier League match in Mohali on Saturday.
Hussey's blistering unbeaten 116 off just 54 balls steered Chennai Super Kings to an imposing 240 for five on a perfect batting strip at the PCA stadium.
The Chennai outfit then restricted the home team to 207 for four to record a win in their opening match which turned out to be a high scoring contest under lights.
It was a virtual carnage at the PCA ground as Hussey plundered runs at will to notch up the second century in the tournament in as many days after Brendon McCullum's 158 in the opening match in Bangalore last night.
Electing to bat, the Chennai team took full advantage of a batting track and short boundaries with sixes and fours raining on a hapless Yuvraj Singh-led home team.
Suresh Raina (32), S Badrinath (31) and Matthew Hayden (25) were the other notable scorers for Chennai Super Kings.
The home team started off well and kept themselves in the hunt till the midway stage of the innings but the dismissal of James Hopes (71) brought Chennai back in the game.
Kumara Sangakkara (54), Karan Goel (24) and captain Yuvraj Singh (23) were the other batsmen who chipped in with some runs for Kings XI.
The highlight of the innings was the explosive strokeplay by Hussey, who hit as many as 10 sixes and seven boundaries to record an amazing strike rate of 211.11.
The likes of Brett Lee, S Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan and James Hopes could do nothing to stop the run deluge while the two spinners Piyush Chawla and Karan Goel were little more than cannon fodder.
In fact, Chawla's only over cost 19 runs forcing Yuvraj to take him out of the attack.
However, skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the highest paid player in the landmark auction, could manage just two runs before being trapped leg before by Hopes.
But his team-mates made amends for his cheap dismissal with some lusty hitting which helped the team put on a mammoth total.
Faced with a stiff asking rate, Kings XI got off to a decent start with Goel and Hopes putting on 56 runs in the first five overs.
After Goel's dismissal, Hopes and the experienced Kumar Sangakkara kept up the tempo with some big hits but the run rate slowed down a bit after spin wizard Muthiah Muralitharan was introduced into the attack.
Muralitharan's experience came handy as he used a lot of variations and gave away just 33 runs in his quota of four overs.
With the required run rate climbing alarmingly after every over, Simon Katich made a valiant effort in the fag end but it was not enough to carry the team to the victory target.
