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I could watch the full proceedings of  day one  of IPL-2, thanks to weekend off in Kuwait.

I sat in front of the TV around 1.30 pm local time and remained “not out” on the couch till the match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Rajastan Royals and the opening ceremony that followed.  A pretty lengthy innings even by own cricket watching standards.

As I expected, it was not all slam bang in South Africa as the opening ceremony had to compensate for the lack of fireworks during two matches.  So much so that the fours package for the Rajastan Royals innings was just a small envelope containing just one four.

Chennai Super Kings V. Mumbai Indians

The first match between Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings was more closely contested than it might appear in the final analysis.

Despite the presence of Sanath Jayasuria and Sachin Tendulkar, the scoreboard didn’t tick that fast even when the fielding restrictions were in place during the first six overs.

The South African pitches and weather conditions seem to give a reasonable chance to the bowlers, quite different from what was seen in IPL first edition last year when the batsmen  just came in there to bang sixes and fours even without taking guard.

Though I am a supporter of the Chennai team, I could not help but notice with disappointment that the Chennai team sported just one genuine Chennai player in S Badrinath – out of the seven local men allowed inside a team.  It is sad that despite good performances in the last edition, Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan and Abinav Mukund were among the five players sent back home from South Africa.

Coming back to the inaugural match, Sachin played the T20 like a 50 over game and took minimum risk to end up remaining unbeaten at end of the innings for a well made 50.  But for the Abhishek Nayar’s burst of three sixes and two fours in a fourteen ball stay, Mumbai would have ended up with lesser runs on the board.  It is interesting to note that the bowler to suffer was none other than Andrew Flintoff one of the two players with unjustifiably high price tags.  Joginder Sharma bowled much better than Flintoff and was quite restrictive.  (he must be remembering his T20 World Cup last over magic).

When Chennai batted except for Hayden, Dhoni and to an extent Flintoff none played with any application including the lone real Chennaite in the team, S Badrinath.

When it was seven wickets down and about 15 runs to score each over, I still had hopes that Chennai Super Kings will make it with the help Dhoni.

However, for two reasons it didn’t happen.

(1) Dhoni seemed to be more happy to let the strike to the tail enders than taking charge. It appeared very unlike Dhoni for me.

(2) Lasith Malinga bowled exceptionally well that he was actually breaking toes of the CSK batsman and was well supported by Dwayne Bravo and Harbhajan Singh.

Bangalore Royal Challengers V. Rajasthan Royals

I looked forward to this match because of three factors.

1. All the hype surrounded by Kevin Pietersen’s recruitment into the team at a very high price – I wanted to see how KP performed and whether he justified the price tag

2. Shane Warne’s motivating leadership

3. Shilpa Shetty (why not, she was the favorite for even T N Seshan, former CEC of India)

True to their image, RR started very well bring BRC to its knees well before one fourth of all overs were bowled.  Jessy Ryder (the nightmare of India in New Zealand), Ross Taylor and our Robin Uthappa sent back to pavilion by Mascarenhas (the first ball duck of Ross Taylor walking across to see his stumps taking a walk will be etched in my memory for a long time).

Then came one of the best T20 innings I have ever seen.  That too from the most unlikely player.  Each run scored by Rahul Dravid had class written all over it.   He seldom slogged in his entire innings spanning 48 deliveries but scored 8 boundaries and one astonishing six over deep mid wicket that went 8 to 10 rows into the stand and looked more like a slap on the face of all his T20 critics.

His 66 came in 48 balls with 8 fours and one six at a strike rate of 140+ and that too when wickets were falling all around him, including that of Kevin Pietersen who looked solid during his stay that fetched 32 valuable runs for BRC.

Ms. Shilpa was giggling away during the innings break and was pretty(!) sure that RR had the match in their pajamas.

However, Pietersen, Anil Kumble and Praveen Kumar had other ideas and within no time the match was well and truly in the hands of the Bangalore Royal Challengers.  Anil Kumble came back to public lime light after his retirement from Test Cricket last year to return with figures of 5 of 5 in just 3.1 overs (19 balls) – jumbo return(s)!  To increase jumbo’s joy, one of the five was Shane Warne, foxed by the old fox to be stumped.

Rahul Dravid very richly deserved the man of the match he earned.

All in all, the Day 1 of the IPL-2 belonged to the super seniors of cricket.  It also points that one cannot expect scores of 180s and 200s very often in this edition of IPL.

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