As one counts down to the third season of the Indian Premier League, we preview the chances of the eight sides in a four-part series. In this part, we bring you the chances of Mumbai Indian and Deccan Chargers.
MUMBAI INDIANS:
Strengths:
The Mumbai Indians have never qualified for the semi-finals of the IPL before and will be looking to get there for the first time. Their biggest strength would be the hard-hitting batting of three of their top-order batsmen in Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasuriya and the newly recruited, Kieron Pollard. If two, or even one of them get going and go the distance, the Mumbai Indians will be in very safe hands, and on Indian pitches, life would be much easier for these guys who like to hit through the line of the ball.
Weaknesses:
Their inability to finish off games is their biggest liability. In both the editions of the tournament so far, the Mumbai side has lost some really close games, and they will need to overcome that by showing a killer instinct that they are hitherto lacking. Tendulkar was never a great captain even while leading the Indian side, and under his captaincy, the Mumbai team hasn’t done too well either, thanks, mainly due to the hunger to close out the games. This needs to change or else it may see a change at the top as well.
Players to watch out for:
Pollard. He is hugely built, and can slam the ball a fair distance. He can bowl 3-4 overs as well, with his brand of medium pace helping captains in the middle overs, while he is one of the better fielders in the side.
DELHI DAREDEVILS:
Strengths:
When a team has such a balanced line-up like Delhi Daredevils, it is not a big surprise that the bookmakers have put them as favourites to win the tournament. The opening four batsmen, are by far, the most explosive in the format of the game and there is a reasonable chance that only three out of Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Dave Warner will make it to the playing eleven. Warner’s form in the KFC Big Bash and the few T20Is that he played for Australia will mean that it could be a tough decision to leave him out of the side. The bowling lies in the hands of Dirk Nannes, and the other Indians in Pradeep Sangwan and Ashish Nehra, all of whom are good, left-handed pace bowlers and with Daniel Vettori and Amit Mishra in the spin department, it looks like they will be a team to watch out for.
Weaknesses:
Not too many perceptible ones. But the lack of an all-rounder is probably one of them. Also, they have a new captain in Gautam Gambhir and that will mean that there will be a lot of pressure on him to perform – Delhi have been semi-finalists in the previous two editions of the tournament after all.
Players to watch out for:
The aforementioned four batsmen aside, the Daredevils will depend on their little known Indian players in Sarabjit Ladda, Kedar Jadhav and Joginder Singh.
Why was he not given the captaincy?
Ever since they bowed out of the first round of the ICC World T20 tournament in England, the Aussies haven’t been playing too much T20. That is, if you discount the two abandoned T20Is against England at Manchester later, in the same year.
Now, after that long hiatus, Australia will take on Pakistan in a one-off T20I and the difference between the line-ups from the World T20 of 2009 and this game, is as much as chalk and cheese. And the biggest of them all is the fact that Ricky Ponting has decided to call it a day from this cheese-burger format of the game, and allow the reigns to fall in the lap of Michael Clarke.
The change was almost assured after the Aussies bowed out of the World T20 early, for the second time in running. Clearly, the side wasn’t respecting the format as much as they should have and the results were there for everyone to see. And with Ponting having a rather rough time of it with the bat and as a captain, one could be assured that something had to give. And in a deed which reeked of a trade-off that Ponting had with the selectors to prolong his career in the other two formats, he decided to hang his T20 Kookabura bat.
However, I am still surprised by Ponting’s successor in this format. While there is no doubting the talent of Michael Clarke in the sport, there are other issues that Cricket Australia needed to ponder over, and cater to.
For one, there is an issue of Clarke’s recurring back illnesses which has kept him out of a few games in the previous years. Of course, Cricket Australia has a reasonable rotation plan in place, but when one is the leader of the side, the breaks are quite few and far between. Especially, given that Clarke has been tipped to succeed Ponting in both the other, and the more important, formats. This would mean that in around one year or so, when Ponting walks his way into the sunset, Clarke would take on the mantle of leading the side in even the Tests and the fifty over format.
So, how will Clarke be able to manage the three sides and a persistent back trouble then?
Then again, there is as much a case for White as there is against Clarke from taking over. There is every evidence that White is a natural leader, which can be gauged from the fact that he has led almost every side that he has been a part of. Right from the Under-19 days, to getting the role for his first class Victorian side, he has been in the thick of things. And it is not only the fact that he is the captain, he has one of the most amazing T20 records in Australia’s domestic T20 tournament – the KFC Big Bash T20.
Ever since the inception of the T20 tournament, there have been five editions of the same played, and the Victorian Bushrangers have been a part of the finals in all of them. What’s more fabulous is that the side has triumphed in four out of those five finals; White being the captain for all five!
Probably, and so reminiscent of the manner the Australians have been testing their bench strength, one could see White and Clarke shuffle around the captaincy as well. Probably, the selectors are only getting Clarke ready for the main job later. Probably, Clarke does have his sights on an IPL slot sometime down the line...as a captain!
One would almost have thought that the Indians had invaded their neighbours. In the end, it was only a bunch of Pakistani cricketers not selected for the third edition of the IPL by the franchises that caused so much furore in the Pakistani parliament that there have been talks of boycotting anything and everything remotely Indian.
The potential embargo could involve cricket matches – which already do not exist – hockey games, which occur once in like a gazillion years, and even Bollywood films. Or at least that is what most voices that matter in Pakistan are suggesting. Phrases ranging from insult to the Pakistani cricket team to insult to the country as a whole have been doing the rounds, as some players have termed it as a ‘conspiracy against Pakistan as a whole which was being hatched for the last three or four months.’
Really now, while being hurt and disappointed at not been selected for one or other franchise for the IPL and not making that quick buck is only justified, the rest of the jamboree that seems to have followed is nothing short of over-reaction.
The critics from Pakistan have pointed fingers at everything plausible. The Indian Government, the IPL functioning committee and the franchises have all been blamed, and for someone observing it as a neutral, one cannot understand what the shenanigans are all about.
It is a private tournament, which like any other multi-national company in the world is not governed by what the government says. At best, it can consult the government and any decision that it has to take has to be its own prerogative, not the government’s. This was evident in the previous year’s IPL when the tournament had been shifted to South Africa despite the government asking them to postpone the whole tournament.
That leaves the IPL and the franchises, and one cannot see how a collective decision to exclude the Pakistanis would have benefited either one of them. In fact, the IPL committee would understand that the presence of Pakistani cricketers and the ensuing following of the game in that country would make for better revenues for the league. And one cannot see any real motive behind conspiring to deliberately do this after strategising for a definite period of times.
The hard and cold fact is that the performances of the teams depend on players who would be there through the entire duration of the tournament; players for whom the franchises did not have to worry too much about after having a lot on their plate already. So, if the visas of such players did not arrive on time because of the cold vibes existing between the two governments, then, it sure could have been an issue for the team unity; apart from adding to the unnecessary things to ponder about for the owners.
While it is easy to say that politics and sport should not be mixed, it is much more difficult to implement it. Gone are the days when cricketers or sportsmen could live in that cocoon of safety despite the existing threat to the world security; and in the prevailing scenario, it is only evident that the Pakistani cricketers touring India – or vice versa – would elicit an unnecessary security threat to those concerned.
Lee was missed by NSW Blues and crashed out
It was almost inconceivable at the start of the tournament. But, unless Lalit Modi comes up with a wildcard concept for the defending champions of the Champions League T20 tournament, they will not be participating in the second edition of the tournament, having already bowed out of KFC Big Bash T20 with only two points in four games out of a possible five matches.
The NSW Blues campaign had begun on a positive note and was almost akin to their performance in the Champions League T20, when they crushed Tasmania by 31 runs in the first game. The win was built around a similar batting prowess of their two openers in Phil Hughes and Dave Warner – both of whom smashed quick-fire half centuries – and captain Moises Henriques’ knock of 37 in the end.
The Tasmanian reply had begun well, what with 44 added for the first wicket off only 20 balls. However, once the first wicket fell, the rest of them capitulated to almost next to nothing to hand the Blues a winning start to their competition.
And it was not as if they were in a lot of trouble in their second game either. The Blues had batted first again against Victorian Bushrangers, and piled up another 178, but against the previous Champions League T20 qualifiers, the target fell short. Victoria had Brad Hodge, Matthew Wade and David Hussey gelling well to guide the Bushrangers to a narrow win with two balls to spare.
It was only in their third game that their wheels began to come apart, as the Western Australian Warriors absolutely bagged them with an imposing score of 198/1 in the 20 overs. This was built around the first century of the tournament by Shaun Marsh and his first wicket stand of 168 with Wes Robinson. Almost playing like they had given up even before the chase had begun, the Blues saw only two of their players getting into double figures and capitulating to 71 all out!
At the start of the Blues’ fourth game, South Australia were leading the points table with eight points from four games, who were followed by Victoria and Western Australia with four from four, while Tasmania had two from four. Both, New South Wales Blues and Queensland had two points from three games, and it was evident that this match between NSW and Queensland was a virtual quarter-final. The side winning the game would go up to four from four matches and tie with Victoria and WA for the second spot, whereas the losing team would be out of the tournament.
As it turned out, the game was reduced to a nine-over a side match due to rain and inclement weather. The Queensland innings began with an early wicket of James Hopes, but Andrew Symonds spanked a 38 off only 21 balls and combined well with Chris Simpson who took the game away with 14-ball 34. In the nine overs, Queensland had got to 110.
Any hopes that NSW would be able to make a match out of it evaporated in the first eight balls of the game, when they lost Phil Hughes, Dave Warner and overseas recruit Dwayne Smith all in the space of those many deliveries! Daniel Vettori then celebrated his first game in the Big Bash with a two over spell that cost only seven runs and that effectively broke the back for the Blues; 56/7 in nine overs.
Incidentally, this last game was watched by almost 30,000 fans, which was a record for domestic T20 cricket in Australia.
Victoria and Queensland then won their respective final games to get through to the Preliminary Finals, whereas South Australia is already through to the final and will face the winner of the Bushrangers and Queensland. South Australia, which has the likes of Shahid Afridi, Kieron Pollard and Shaun Tait in their side have already qualified for the Champions League T20.
The Indian Premier League is a good two months away, but there is already a little buzz around the player transfers and the forthcoming auctions. However, the biggest piece of news coming from the IPL camp is that out of the list of 97 players that had put in their names in the ‘probables’ hat for the auctions, the league has gotten one Chris Cairns out of the list.
And the reason? “For his alleged allegation as we have zero tolerance for this kind of stuff,” as put by succinctly by Lalit Modi. The more interesting bit here is that allegations against the Kiwi all-rounder had come during the unsanctioned, and a rival to the IPL, Indian Cricket League.
Make no mistake, the BCCI must be lauded for not using a line like, “ICL is an unauthorised league and hence, we do not take match-fixing in that league as authentic enough.” After all, fixing a match, is a cricketing crime by itself and whether or not the tournament is authorised should not be a deciding factor here.
However, I have another problem with this decision. And that has to do with the fact that as far as the reports, there was an allegation of match-fixing, which was neither proved, nor proclaimed in the media. The official reason for his ouster from the league then, had been that he had hidden an injury, and continued playing in the league. So, isn’t this a case of using the yardstick of being guilty till proved innocent?
And if at all Cairns – or anyone else – had actually been involved in match-fixing during the Indian Cricket League, it is a mighty surprise that it has not yet come out in the public. Nothing more than rumours have so far! Let’s hope there is more coming our way from this story so that there is a clarity regarding what actually happened for the stakeholders of the game.
Apart from the Cairns saga, the IPL transfer window opened to a very lukewarm response. Till date, not too many transactions have taken place; Owais Shah (originally from Delhi) has been exchanged with Moises Henriques (from Kolkata) whereas Manoj Tiwari, also from Delhi earlier was taken up by Kolkata. While the Tiwari buy-out makes sense given that he is originally from Bengal and will help in building up the brand for the Knight Riders, what is surprising from Kolkata’s point of view is the Henriques was allowed to go for another foreign player.
For one, Henriques is the captain of the New South Wales Blues T20 side in their KFC Big Bash back home, which was very evident in the manner he performed with both, the bat and the ball during the Champions League T20. His all-round skills would have been of utmost utility in the tournament, and one would have almost seen a clamour for buying him out at the auctions. One almost feels that the management has missed out on a trick or two here.
Secondly, one could have understood if the exchange would have taken place in order to free up a slot for the foreign player. In this case, it is a foreign player that has been chosen for Henriques, which means that the Knight Riders will be left with no freed space for anyone extra from the auctions either.
On the 28th of december the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash will set to rock Australia and the world with quality competition.
You may have seen them in the CLT20...
VB Bushrangers
RTA SpeedBlitz Blues
Along with more teams:
XXXX Gold Queensland Bulls
PKF Tasmanian Tigers
Retravision Warriors
West End Redbacks
Dates:
Starts 28th of December 2009
Final played on 23rd January 2009
Watch at T20cricket.Asia soon for an Official Schedule for the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash!
- December 23, 2009
- article by admin
- 0 comments
Finally makes peace between N. Srinivasan and Lalit Modi
There are two cricketing rivalries which have stood the tests of time, an Australia-England one that plays for the Ashes, and an India-Pakistan one that plays for everything and cricket! However, if ICC’s latest World T20 qualifiers are anything to go by, then, there could be another big one that could be added to the aforementioned list; something that could go on to assume colossal proportions in the years to come!
USA will be taking on Afghanistan in the Middle East in February, as a part of the qualifiers for the ICC World T20 that will be played in the month of April next year. The tournament is an eight-nation tournament, with the top two from them going on to be the part of the main event in the West Indies in 2010 in April.
The ICC World T20 is a 12-nation tournament, and the top ten countries – all the test playing nations – have already gained automatic qualifications. Apart from these ten, the top six countries in the world, and two special invitees from the ICC are featuring in this qualifier. These include Afghanistan, Scotland, Ireland, Kenya, Netherlands, UAE, USA and Canada. While the remaining six are direct qualifiers for these qualifiers, USA and UAE have been doled out special invites. USA and Afghanistan have a political history going on for the last decade or so, and this match could spark off a new cricketing rivalry in the future.
Group A consists of Ireland and Scotland apart from these two, whereas Group B has Kenya, Netherlands, Canada and UAE. The top two from each group will then join a Super Fours group where each team will play the others once – except the team qualified from their own group – and the top two will not only qualify for the finals but also for the ICC World T20 – the T20 equivalent of the World Cup.
Back in India with the Indian Premier League, the BCCI has finally ended all speculations about the future of Lalit Modi as the chief of the tournament. He has been assigned the job since 2012, after it had been claimed in the media that he had lost his job. It was a long-standing feud between Modi and the secretary of the cricket board, N. Srinivasan that had led to these speculations, but the President of the Board, Shashank Manohar has laid all this to rest.
While the ego battle – or whatever else can be used to describe it – is definitely something for the Board members to rectify internally and move ahead, I wonder whether there is any ‘Succession Plan’ in place in the eventuality that Modi does end his reign as the leader of the pack. Because, while handling the BCCI is one thing, it is quite a different and a more challenging issue to handle a tournament of the magnitude of IPL without someone with the desired expertise.
In the meantime, Modi has also announced that the fourth edition of the Indian Premier League which will be played in 2011, will have two extra teams. There will, thus, be ten sides, and 94 games in all, making it a really grand event. However, what will not be so grand will be the fact that every side will thus play a minimum of 18 games, and hence travel as much through the couple of months through the length and the breadth of the country. Fatigue and tiredness will be a concern for all the players, as will be injury issues and fitness woes. Whether the rule that the Indian players can play a maximum of 12 games will make too much of a difference will remain to be seen, but the increase in the matches will definitely have its effect on viewership as well, as the viewer-fatigue is as big an issue as its players’ counterpart.
So, will there be a rule regarding the maximum number of games a fan can watch as well? Now that would be an interesting call, won’t it?!
In the end, the score-line of 1-1 justifies the kind of cricket that was on display in the two game T20I series. The pitches were tailor-made for allowing the batsmen to get away with murder – and more – whereas the bowlers could be proud to not concede more than eight in an over on an average. There were a couple of short spells where the bowlers did look like they did have an outside chance of being anything apart from just number-fillers, but that was too few and far between and in the end, more than 800 runs were scored in the two games at an average runs per over of more than ten.
Need to stick their hands into Glue instead of Butter:
Looking back at the just concluded T20I series between India and Sri Lanka, the one mighty factor that will probably remain etched in most cricket fans’ minds, is probably the appalling levels of fielding that were on display. It began with the Indians in the first T20I, continued with them in the second T20I as well, before managing to rub off on to the Lankans at Mohali.
The sheer numbers – of dropped catches and missed run-out chances – do not do any justice to the almost comical depths of despair that the fielding fell to. Yet, for the sake of driving home the point, India missed out on five catches and a run-out in the first game, while ‘improving’ it in the second by dropping six. Lanka then sealed the supposed pact by letting go of another couple but missing half a dozen run-out chances in the process!
Ironically, Team India had only just appointed Michael Young, as their fielding consultant for a period of two weeks. And given the display in the fielding, either this will be the last of the contracts he ever signs with the Indian side, or the signing could not have come at a better time and would probably culminate into a much longer contract.
Either way, the commentator and former Indian captain, Sunil Gavaskar had the last say in the matter when he exclaimed, “The manner in which they are fielding, they will not even catch a cold in this Mohali weather!”
‘It is almost all over for the opposition when Sangakkara sings!’
The form exhibited by the Sri Lankan skipper in the final test match at Brabourne, after four successive relative failures should have sent the warning signals to the Indian bowlers. As it turned out, either the signals were ignored, or the execution to those well-laid out plans was wayward, and the Lankan captain smashed two successive half centuries in the games to lead the side to 200 plus totals in the process. The two half centuries, incidentally, came off 21 and 29 balls respectively.
The difference in the two games was that while Chamara Kapugedera afforded him good enough support in the middle overs of their innings, his dismissal in the middle of the innings in the second T20I led to a Lankan collapse. Those nine less runs and the fact that they fielded worse in the second game ended Sri Lanka’s hopes of winning it 2-0.
The Indian fightback:
For about three out of the four innings during the series, India had been thoroughly outplayed before Virender Sehwag, MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh combined well to bring India home. It was the highest ever total chased in a T20I as they had in the second game, and was abetted in no small terms by the lack of an effort exhibited by the tourists on the field.
However, credit must be afforded where its due, and the batting approach adopted by the Indian top-order was quite different from what it had in the first T20I where the batsmen barely seemed to have much strategy going in for the chase. Gautam Gambhir had provided the Indians with a start that they could have only dreamt of, but the batting display by the rest of the batsmen was nothing short of nightmare. In the second T20I, there was a healthier approach towards chasing it down, with a definite plan of how the batsmen needed to go about it, instead of smashing every ball in the air.
Match to India!
Change of format, will continue to look to continue winning streak
After a rather one-sided test match series which has already given a peek-review into how run-gluttonous the rest of the tour would be, the Indian s will host Sri Lanka for a two game T20I series. And despite what transpired in the test series, the T20Is promise to be lot more closely fought, thanks mainly due to the format itself, and partially due to the fact that the Indians have struggled to get the results their way in the T20s. This piece previews the T20I series between India and Sri Lanka.
New Personnel add spice:
It wasn’t a surprise when the Indian selectors decided to get in quite a number of new guys into the T20I squad. Especially given that the Indians have had a rather rough year in this format of the game. What has been surprising, it is that the majority of the changes have been afforded to the bowling department, whereas the batting is mostly unscathed.
India will obviously be bolstered by the presence of Virender Sehwag, who had missed out on the ICC World T20 due to a shoulder injury, but apart from him, the batting line-up is fairly the same. Yusuf Pathan should hold his place in the lower order as an off-spinning all-rounder. The bowling, on the other hand, could see some changes, what with the presence of Ashok Dinda, Sudeep Tyagi and R.Ashwin. At least one of these three should make their international debut, and in the absence of Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan – both of whom have been rested – the support cast will look to make their presence felt. Sreesanth is in the squad, but may miss out after he was hit by a stomach bug.
Sri Lanka will welcome their grand old man, Sanath Jayasuriya, into the playing eleven. However, his form will be much dissected and another couple of failures could very well send him into retirement. Muttiah Muralitharan will miss the T20s due to injury, and that could mean that Ajantha Mendis will have another opportunity to get one back from the Indians. Off-spin bowler Muthumudalige Pushpakumara could be thrown into the deep end, and it will be interesting to see how the Indians handle him.
India’s appalling T20 record to the fore?
Believe it or not, but India has had a terrible T20 record following their ICC World T20 win in 2007. Post that tournament, India had beaten Australia in a one-off game at home, but beyond that, lost to the Aussies, Kiwis (twice), England, West Indies, South Africa, while winning their only game of note against Sri Lanka. Despite all their players being a part of the IPL in both the seasons, it is very evident that the Indians have not been very comfortable with this format of the game and this discomfiture will be put to fore in the series.
Sri Lanka had a good run till they lost to Pakistan in the finals of the ICC World T20 this year, after which they have lost four successive games. Plus, they would be reeling under the mental agony from being bruised by the Indian batsmen in the test matches.
All in all, the cliché needs to be sounded out. It is a format where the tag of favourites remains as just that – a tag!
Will Ganguly rise from the KKR ashes?
It is quite evident by the way things are shaping that the Kolkata Knight Riders team are gunning to be much more than only the glam team that they have been portrayed to be so far. With the off-the-field performances from Kolkata Knight Riders speaking louder than those on it, the side managed to ‘out-perform’ themselves in the second season by finishing at the bottom of the table.
However, if one were to look for signs this early before the tournament, then the Knight Riders seem serious enough to get their results back on track. John Buchanan was shown the door – as was his entourage – immediately after the debacle despite having a contract for a much longer tenure and another Aussie, Dav Whatmore was hired after a rather long and a winding hiring process. One almost sense that the manner in which both the coaches had been hired, it could be used as a case study in one of those Human Resources Management lectures in those MBA-schools in India!
Whatmore could not be a more different choice than Buchanan. Unlike his predecessor, Whatmore has had a rich experience of coaching in the sub-continent, and probably understands the culture and the psyche of the players as well as anyone else. He was the coach of the 1996 World Cup winning Sri Lankan side and also of the Bangladeshi side in the 2007 edition of the same. And had it not been for his inability to keep shut about an impending selection to the Indian team, he would have, in all probabilities, coached the most followed side of the cricketing world as well. He was head of the National Cricket Academy in India before accepting this offer.
This was followed by the selection of Sourav Ganguly as the captain of the side. Now, while the critics may paint this move as retrograde, a reasonably high-pressure tournament like this will need someone who could take the game by the scuff of its neck and bring back the results. And from those around, and despite the odd snigger about his fitness issues, Ganguly looks to be the best man for the job. Not only this, but Ganguly has also expressed his desire to play county cricket in the T20 competition, and if the rumour-mills are to be believed, he could be in line to sign a deal with Essex for the tournament!
Apart from the announcement of the coach and the captain, the Kolkata Knight Riders have begun to slowly get in the domestic players who could bolster their Indian bench strength. Probably, the realisation seems to have finally dawned upon the management, that given the high ratio of Indian to foreign players allowed in the playing eleven, it would make sense to get in the quality fringe Indian cricketers into the side as well. Instead of only targeting the big foreign names! As a result of this, ICL-returns, Rohan Gavaskar and Eklak Ahmid have been signed up by KKR and in all probabilities, there could be many more being pruned.
What would also work as an excellent news for the team management is that Brad Hodge has announced his retirement from international cricket. Despite Hodge’s slow start to the second season of the IPL, he took off reasonably well, and given his humongous experience, he should be a handy asset through the entire duration of the tournament.
To me, it does look like things are falling in place for the Kolkata Knight Riders and they could be one of the teams to look out for.
