The second edition of the Champions League T20 will be played in September this year, and unlike the last season where there were 12 teams, there will only be ten sides participating in this year’s competition. This is thanks to the absence of the two English counties, because of the overlap of the tournament with the English county championship, thus allowing participation from only India, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, West Indies and Sri Lanka.
India will be represented by three teams, Australia and South Africa will have two sides each, whereas there will be one each from West Indies, Sri Lanka and New Zealand. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe have not been afforded an invitation yet.
Nine out of the ten teams have already qualified for the Champions League so far. The only side which is yet to go through in the one from West Indies, where domestic T20 tournament has yet to be played.
India:
Chennai Super Kings:
Won the IPL after it looked at one stage that they will not even get through to the semi-finals.
Mumbai Indians:
Played the most consistent and quality cricket in the IPL before losing to Chennai in the final of the tournament
Royal Challengers Bangalore:
A patchy IPL this year ended with a semi-final loss to Mumbai, but they beat Deccan in the third-place pay-off to win that third place in the Champions League T20.
Australia:
Victoria Bushrangers:
Winners of the KFC Big Bash T20 tournament. And easily, the most consistent team in the T20 cricket in Australia. Out of the five KFC Big Bash tournaments that have been played in the country, they have won four and been runner-up once.
Southern Redbacks:
South Australia made their first entry into the final this season after having never finished better than fourth earlier.
South Africa:
Western Warriors:
Won the Standard Bank Pro20 tournament this season with consummate ease to qualify for the Champions League T20
Lions:
Good performances throughout the league helped them get through to the semi-finals, where they won two close games against Titans to go through to the final. They lost to Warriors, but made it through to the CLT20.
New Zealand:
Central Districts:
It was Central Stags in this season who made it through to the Champions League T20, thanks to some aggressive cricket from the likes of Ross Taylor. Taylor blasted an 80 in the final of the HRV Cup to propel his side to a 78-run win over Auckland and a vital spot in the CLT20.
Sri Lanka:
Wayamba:
Wayamba made it through to the Champions League T20 again for a second year in a row after they beat Ruhuna in the final of the inter-provincial tournament. The victory was comprehensive, and much like Central Districts, brought about by a 91 by Mahela Jayawardene which meant that the Wayamba side were through.
A special mention needs to be made of the Pakistani side, Sialkot Stallions, who have won their domestic tournament for five successive times, but will not be able to play again due to confusion between what their chairman Ejaz Butt said and what he had thought he said!
That Mumbai Indians deserved to win the final is a known fact. However, in sport, much like in life, it is almost impossible to equate the two things; and in the end, what matters is results.
That said, it was very evident that Chennai played well enough, but had Mumbai Indians played in the manner that they had in the rest of the tournament, it would not have been easy for the Super Kings. So, where did the Mumbai Indians go wrong?
Toss?
Of course, that cannot be a factor, or can it? While saying that the toss played an important role in Mumbai’s loss, I am not trying to find excuses. It is a rather simple fact of life. In a tournament as long as this, expecting the pitches to remain as good as they had through the first part of the tournament is rather foolhardy. And with the pitches playing, any team batting second would find it difficult to chase; Mumbai or Chennai.
That is precisely what happened, as the Mumbai Indians collapsed to a defeat chasing a big enough total. Three out of the final four games, including the two semi-finals were won by the sides batting first and were one-sided at that.
Dropped catches:
I would have been tempted to add the lbw appeals that went against the Mumbai Indians as well, but to me, it looks like the umpires actually helped the Mumbai team by negating the two of them against Matthew Hayden. Because, till the time he was there, the Chennai Super Kings were actually struggling. And then, he got out!
Talking of the catches, Suresh Raina offered two, rather simple catches and was dropped on both the occasions. Now, Raina is still some way off being a top-notch finisher, but he has the quality nonetheless, to make you pay. And that is exactly what he did! Bye-bye match.
Where/Who was the captain?
That was a captain that at least half of the billion people watching the game had in their mind while the Mumbai Indians batted. The other half was clearly sleeping.
There were many instances of muddled thinking during the entire twenty overs of Mumbai’s innings, and even before that. For one, Abhishek Nayar had no business to bat as high as the number three position, which should have, ideally, gone to either Saurabh Tiwary or Ambati Rayadu, both of whom had done it before in the tournament, and quite well at that. Then again, if he did bat at that number, the acceleration, or at least the attempt at that, should have come much earlier than the tenth over.
The second case in point was that of Harbhajan Singh sent at number four. While I agree that this was a double-edged sword, with a good chance of coming off, what one must remember is that despite how Tiwary has batted in the tournament, he has needed 6-8 balls to get going; something that was crucial at that stage. He was the ideal number four, from where he could have stamped his authority in the later stage.
And then, even without questioning the reasons behind not sending in Kieron Pollard, it ws quite appalling to see JP Duminy bat at the number seven position in the batting. Over Pollard. Made absolutely no sense, given that not in the entire series has he ever given an impression that he can score runs at the 13 runs per over needed at that stage. To me, it was game, set, match to Chennai the moment Duminy walked out to bat.
What is an IPL without any controversy? The tournament had not even set foot when it was surrounded on all sides by controversies galore, with Lalit Modi being at the centre of most of them. Security concerns, issues with English board, boring strategic time-outs, cheer-leaders, alcohol, ousted Pakistani players and so on; everything seemed to have had things going against them.
Thankfully, after the start of the tournament, the off-the-field issues have stopped, but on the field, the players have continued to make news for all the wrong reasons. Here is a lowdown of all the things that have gone wrong in the tournament so far:
Yuvraj proposes, Ness disposes:
After been disposed off as the captain of the Kings XI Punjab side, Yuvraj Singh wanted to shift to the Mumbai Indians side according to a report in a newspaper. The owner of the side, Ness Wadia refused, but then was worried that the combination of the loss of captaincy and the lack of desire to play for Punjab would mean that he could underperform. Wadia is then said to have supposedly spoken to the BCCI about his fears, who had had a talk with the player.
The result? Yuvraj Singh struggles through most part of the first half of the tournament, whereas the Punjab side capitulate to one loss after another and after having played ten games, they are already out of the tournament.
Ordinary or extra-ordinary?
Gautam Gambhir is a rather angry man on most occasions, but this time around he seemed to have stirred the hornet’s nest by calling the Rajasthan side ordinary. He was been asked whether he thought he was worried about the Royals chasing down the target that was set by the Daredevils, and he replied that apart from Yusuf Pathan, he was barely worried about the ordinary side.
Modi reprimanded Gambhir, but that did not mean that the dashing southpaw stopped making statements. He said that he stood by what he said and did not care much for people who had not held a bat in their hands – alluding to Shilpa Shetty in this case. Rajasthan went on to beat Deccan and Punjab in two successive games and look to be heading their way into the semi-finals.
While diplomacy was never Gambhir’s middle name, surprising to hear Gambhir call the Royals ordinary anyway, given that they have won the first edition of the IPL and look good to enter the semi-finals in the second!
Over-rate issues:
While it was good to observe that the IPL had taken upon itself to sweep the slow over-rate offenders with fines that were anything but tiny, the surprising bit was that not only the captain but all the rest of the players were fined a bomb as well.
So picture this. Kumar Sangakkara gets fined $20k for his first offence, $40k for his second and gets banned for his third one. He has already lost more than $100k in fines. But more importantly, each of his player has also lost around $50k, which is probably more than what some of the players even earn in the entire duration of the tournament! This means that by playing in the IPL, these players, with contracts worth $30,000 or $50,000 stand to gain nothing, all thanks to some slow thinking captains! Quite a joke I tell you!
The third edition of the IPL is almost heading to its mid-way stage and it is still a very open tournament. While Mumbai is firmly perched at the top and look favourites to make it to the semi-finals, while the Kings XI Punjab at the bottom of the pile may crash out of the tournament if they lose another couple, there is a good race amongst the rest for the semi-finals spot.
This piece talks about three of the best innings played in this IPL so far:
Yusuf Pathan, 100 (37 balls) versus Mumbai Indians:
Not often does a century in T20 cricket end in a lost cause. This is exactly what happened when Yusuf Pathan smacked a 37-ball century consisting of nine fours and eight huge sixes, as his side failed to provide him with the necessary support required to win the game.
Chasing a total of 213 for a win, the Royals were down in the dumps at 66/4 in the tenth over with almost an academic interest left in the margin of defeat. Instead, Pathan had other ideas and by the time he was unfortunately run-out, the Royals had the entire momentum going their way, as only 40 runs were needed for the win off three overs.
The rest of them failed, and the Mumbai Indians ended winners by only 4 runs. It also led Shane Warne to quip that it was the best innings he had seen in career lasting two decades!
Jacques Kallis, 89 (55 balls), versus Kings XI Punjab:
It was an innings of great poise and substance. The Kings XI Punjab had piled up 203 in their twenty overs and chasing it down was going to be difficult. Not so much as the Bangalore team opened their innings with Kallis, who was expected to do the anchor’s role. Instead, the pair of Manish Pandey and Kallis mesmerised the Punjab attack with a 74 run stand and then Kallis rotated the strike over with Robin Uthappa looking in sizzling touch.
Even by the time Uthappa was dismissed, the Bangalore side needed 61 runs off six overs, a total that the team got with consummate ease thanks to the great South African; Kallis. His 89 ahd eight fours and most surprisingly, five sixes, something not to be expected from a more sedate batsman like Kallis!
Sachin Tendulkar, 71 (48 balls), versus Kolkata Knight Riders:
That Tendulkar has been in the form of his life is not unheard of. However, for him to play in the manner that he has in this tournament so far has been a sheer treat to the eyes, in a format that not many reckon his cup of tea. Against the Knight Riders, the target was 156, and Tendulkar opened the innings. He was ably supported by the others around him, but most importantly, he kept picking up the boundaries throughout the duration of his innings.
But most specifically, he reserved a special treatment for Ishant Sharma, someone who was banished to the fence each time he erred ever so slightly in the spell. Sharma did pick up a couple of wickets, but could not get Tendulkar out and conceded 44 runs off his four overs.
And Mumbai won with seven wickets and nine balls to spare!
It was a heart-warming innings in a format of the game which is usually associated with brute power and thrashing!
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.
Google Buys Live TV Rights to 2010 IPL
Google's Live Internet Video Streaming Website - YouTube, will have exclusive rights to play the 2010 Indian Premier League. Money will be made from advertising. This is fantastic news for people with fast broadband internet.
What do you think?
article by Robert Andrews
Google has confirmed yesterday’s reports - YouTube has inked rights from the big-money Indian Premier League’s (IPL) licensing partner Global Cricket Ventures to live-stream all 60 matches of the 45-day tournament, starting March 12.
It’s YouTube’s first deal to live-stream a big global sport - no mere domestic competition, IPL is the largest cricket tournament in the world, forecast to generate Read the rest of this entry...
- January 24, 2010
- article by Jimmy
- 0 comments
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.
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.
Mohammad Yousuf must be a changed man. There cannot be any other way to describe him otherwise. For a cricketer who quit Pakistani cricket in a huff to join the rebel Indian Cricket League T20, then had events flipping and flopping between the two extremes of being a Pakistani international cricketer to being christened a pariah to their cricket, to being selected as the captain of the side, his recent worry on how Pakistani cricket was suffering due to the excesses of T20 makes him go a long way in their cricket.
Probably Yousuf does understand that if anything, his T20 career is all but finished. It was done and dusted even before the teams went to South Africa for the 2007 edition of the ICC World T20, when the selectors had refused to select him in the squad. Mind you, his international career had been on a relative high at that moment, but the wise men clearly saw what he hadn’t; the format needed someone with the penchant to field better than he ever did, and run between the wickets in a manner that Yousuf would have probably never imagined in his life. So, almost three years after that fateful unacceptability of change, the batsman seems to have reconciled to his fate and realised that the likes of ICC World T20 and IPL may not be his cuppa coffee anymore. Especially after not a single team wanted to bid for him during the IPL auctions and then, with the deteriorating Indo-Pak relations over the last one year or so.
It is no surprise then, that the Pakistani captain is all of a sudden worried about the future of Pakistani cricket in relation with the T20 cricket. However, and I understand this is only conjecture – and a far-fetched one at that – I would like to see what Yousuf does if he does have the fortune of being selected by one of the franchises in any of the forthcoming IPLs. Sachin Tendulkar has retired from T20 cricket, and so has Ricky Ponting. Will Yousuf reject the contract to set a benchmark and for the betterment of his nation’s international performance? Only time can tell!
Talking of Yousuf and the country that he is touring currently – Australia – the KFC T20 Big Bash got underway this week. The first round of matches saw Queensland take on Victoria, Western Australia play South Australia and Tasmania feature against New South Wales. The incentive is there for all the teams to grab; a chance to represent their side in the Champions League T20 for a multi-million dollar prize money!
New Zealand international cricketer Ross Taylor had been picked up by Victoria in place of Sohail Tanvir and he immediately stuck gold with a 36-ball 58 and took the previous year’s runner-up to 157/8 in their 20 overs after having slumped to 5/3 at one stage. Andrew Symonds’ return lasted all of 14 balls in which he scored 16, but with 37 needed off the last four overs and with four wickets remaining, it could have been anybody’s game. Rain intervened, and the Bulls were fund four runs short of the target.
South Australia then had their international stars, Keiron Pollard and Shahid Afridi, win their first game against Western Australia. First, Pollard spanked a 31-ball 45, and then Afridi ran through the WA innings with a 4/19 in his four overs.
In the third game, Dave Warner of the NSW Blues smacked the quickest fifty ever in the competition off 18 balls, and despite a strong start by Tim Paine – 48 off 18 – the rest of the Tasmanians collapsed to 163 all out to hand the opposition over a 32-run win.
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?!
