Taylor wins Kiwi battle

This was a match between two struggling teams but the battle within that contest was between two struggling Kiwis. Brendon McCullum did everything that could have been asked of him in a whirlwind of an innings and threw down the gauntlet for Ross Taylor; he picked it up and replied with a flurry of boundaries. Taylor won the points, McCullum won the crowd's sympathy.
As he sank to his knees at the end, with the haunted look that he has worn almost right through this tournament, someone in the crowd shouted -- "Don't worry McCullum, we love you". One wonders what he would have made of the sympathy, if at all he heard it; it's not a sentiment that appeals to sportsmen. Yet one could only sympathise with a man who had done almost everything he could to win the game -- till the final overs, when his bowlers let him down and Taylor seized the moment.
Carpe diem is a fine aspiration but not everybody manages to do it. Like McCullum, Taylor was struggling so far, in and out of the team, but exploded in a spectacular way. "It was a relief to contribute," he said later. "It felt good to repay the faith of the management."
Perhaps it was the situation that released him from the recent past. There was only one thing he could do out there after the top-order had been dismissed and the required run rate shot up. Hit out. In moments of trouble, you turn to your strength, your stock weapon. Taylor's is the big mow across the line. Time and again, he walked across and swung everything out of sight to the legside. It revealed as much about his batting as it showed up Kolkata's bowlers.