IPL 2 – so far so good
Indian Premier League (IPL) being hosted and played in South Africa by itself sounds jarring to my ears. How can you call it Indian Premier League and have the matches played in a neutral venue for security reasons.
IPL, in my opinion stands for Indian Pride Lost and the irony is we shifted the matches to South Africa due to General Elections in India and South Africa themselves went in for General Elections while hosting the matches on behalf of India.
IPL is about cricket in its latest form Twenty 20. When i first heard of Twenty 20 several years ago I asked a friend of mine in Dubai Mr.Shekar “Sir, What is Twenty 20?”. Without even thinking for a second he said “I don’t know but i think it should be a game played between two teams each having 20 players”. I said “That cannot be the case because with 9 more players on the field you cannot score even one run in 50 overs”. He said “Sir, they play 6 a side in Hongkong that is why i thought they would be playing 20 a side”. I told my friend “Sir it should be 20 overs each side that is why they called it Twenty 20″. He immediately said “I think you are right”. Much later we found out that it was twenty overs a side and not twenty players a side.
Twenty 20 is a great concept and initially people were saying that it can shatter he confidence of a bowler. Now with more and more matches being played it is truly becoming a contest between the bat and the ball. There are matches where the bowlers do get an upper hand though only in small patches of the game.
Coming to IPL 2, the second edition being played at South Africa, it has been going good – “so far so good”. The matches have been played with lot of spirit (each time the camera turns to the crowd we get to see people carrying beer glasses) and sportsman spirit. It is infact nice to see different countrymen playing together in one team as a cohesive unit. At the same time it is also very interesting to see the same countrymen playing against each other – Bravo bowling to Chris Gayle; Zaheer Khan bowling to Rahul Dravid; Kallis bowling to Smith – what a sight to watch.
Older players who are in their mid or late thirtees performing well in this IPL 2 is a great treat for the eyes. Mathew Hayden, Rahul Dravid, Gilchrist, Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasurya to name a few have played so well, you wonder whether they are 30+ or 20+. I also find some of the youngsters doing very well in this tournament. Kamran Khan is a great find of the tournament. He has demonstrated excellent temperament and poise in the games so far. The way he bowled the last over in the Rajasthan Vs Kolkatta match was brilliant. The balance and calmness he showed while bowling the Super Over made me wonder if he is really a 18 year old. He would surely be a great asset for the Indian Cricket Team for the next couple of decades. He needs to be groomed, guided and molded properly with total focus on his cricket. We have seen it in the past how young talent goes wasted as our guys get tempted with advertisement, TV shows and Films.
The teams are equally balanced and on paper all the eight teams look very competitive. Last year Hyderabad and Bangalore were looking as very strong teams on paper but both performed very badly last year. There was an underdog which did not boast of any big names (except Shane Warne) and ended up as the Champions. The expectations and the actual performances were totally contrary to each other in the last year matches.
This year i feel that we have had very good matches so far and the 15 games that have been played (2 were rained out) till 27th April 2009 have shown that teams which have applied themselves into the game from the word go have actually won the game. This is the beauty of Twenty 20 – you got to apply yourself into the game and stay focused from the first ball to the last ball – right through the 40 overs of the match. This was clearly demonstrated in the Bombay Vs. Calcutta match yesterday. The Bombay team stayed focussed from the first ball with Tendulkar leading the way and stayed totally focused as a team till the Kolkatta team was bowled out. On the contrary the Kolkotta team looked like a disintegrated bunch forced to stay together (struggled to stay together as a team).
Hyderabad team has played very well so far and with Delhi and Bombay close on heels it looks like it will be a very close contest towards the end. Going by the performance so far – at the nearly 1/3rd mark – in my opinion the four teams that would meet in the Semi Finals will be Hyderabad, Delhi, Bombay and Punjab.
Chennai is the only team which still has an outside chance of bouncing back into the tournament. Being a Chennaite and being an ardent fan of Dhoni, i would definitely like Chennai to do well in the rest of the Tournament and bounce back to give tough time to the others. Chennai has scored well in the matches so far but did not bring about a comprehensive performance with the batting, bowling and fielding. They seem to have lacked in each of the three departments in patches. The greatest saving grace for Chennai is the consistent performance of Mathew Hayden. As regards the remaining three teams, viz., Kolkatta, Bangalore and Rajasthan i do not feel that they have any chance of bouncing back given the extraordinary strength demonstrated by the top four teams.
My Prediction for the Final is Hyderabad Vs.Bombay. Let us wait and watch. It has been and will definitely continue to be a great fun to watch the IPL 2 matches. It is a wholesome entertainment live on action every day for another four weeks. This has been the real “Super Cool” offer this Summer.
Written by: T P Anand. He wrote this article on April 28, 2009. It is because of my laziness that I publish it today by which time Mumbai one of Anand’s favorite have not played the game to their potential and have a remote chance of reaching the finals. So, it might well be a repeat of last year with Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings playing the finals. But how knows there are more twists (no, I am not referring to the dancing of the Cheer girls) in the IPL.
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