Cover Points : IPL

Hindsight is 20-20

gchakravarthy — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:19:00 GMT

Ok ... what just happened?

We all have come to terms with the fact that the 2009 edition of the Indian Premier League is NOT actually being in India. But how many of us were ready for the rest of the topsy-turvy ouctomes in just 2 days of IPL?

All 8 teams have played at least one match each and here's what's happened:

Last year's finalists both lost their first matches.
Last year's champions, in fact, ended up with the lowest total in "IPL history".
Last year's worst 2 teams won their first matches and that too with huge margins.
Last year's champions, in fact, lost to last year's worst team.

As far as individual performances go, the so-called old-timers, the ones who are supposedly "not suited for the shorter game", the "slow movers", the ones who are not considered good enough to be part of their national team, were indeed the stars of the first round:

Rahul Dravid ended up with a 120+ rated 66 to give his team's bowlers a something to defend
Anil Kumble, one of those bowlers, ended up with figures of 3.5 overs 5 wickets for 5 runs!
Sachin Tendulkar held his team's batting order in order and did what Rahul Dravid did for the Royal Challengers.

Batsmen were supposed to take everything the away bowlers and into the stands:

Anil Kumble has already been mentioned above
Ojha and Vettori did exceptionally well for the Chargers

You heard it ... this IS South Africa we are talking about and it is spinning like a top and the top spinners are out to hunt.

Captains were swapped around:

Gilly for VVS
KP for the Wall
Paaji for Bhajji (even though Bhajji did it since Sachin was out due to injury the last time around)
McCullum for Dada

One thing that stayed in line with expectations was the importance of an all rounder. This was illustrated in the match up between Kolkata and Deccan which staged quite a first in that it had or captains 2 players who were truly all rounders. McCullum and Gilchrist are each wicket-keeping batsmen, openers at that, AND captains of their respective star-studded teams.

It was quite intereting to note that South Africans refer to their kids who attend school as learners and not students. So even as Lalit Modi hands over a cheque for ZAR100,000 to a South African school and thier learners jump up in joy, one can't but wonder what the older but equally keen and astute learners of cricket will be learning from the benefit of their hindsight from the first IPL season. Those IPL "leader caps" might exchange very strange hands this time around.

The T20 format might not have too much of a history, but has enough for cliches to have come out already. "All it takes is one over for the match to turn completely" anyone?

Well, looks like all it takes is one season for some seasoned cricketers to turn their limited overs career around.

ICL = International Cricket League?

dcsiva — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:49:00 GMT

Arjuna Ranatunga the administrator is carrying on the mysterious ways he developed as captain. I can't begin to imagine what has possessed the man, especially given that SL's current players are still agitating for playing in the IPL next year, not touring England. Good luck to him anyway!

Having predicted the creation of a Sri Lanka team in the ICL, which looks one giant step closer to happening now, Soulberry is now thinking ICL tie-ups with Stanford:

ICL comes that much closer to recognition/acceptance and a possible tie-up with Stanford at some point in the future may not be a pipe-dream anymore.

SL has solved the problem of keeping its players well-paid and happy with one stroke. Others are sure to follow.

Jrod puts it in the way only he could:

But say what you will, it takes a fair man to stick his middle digit up at a millionaire kidnapper.

Would you?

I cannot believe me and Arjuna agree on anything.

If Arjuna had a blog, oh the angry comments he would get.

That would teach him for this anti establishment behaviour.

Finally, Kartikeya gives us a run-down on the Irani Trophy, both review and preview.

Sri Lanka Cricket and its IPL players

dcsiva — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:02:00 GMT

Sri Lanka Cricket and its players are still battling with one another. The brief summary: SLC granted permission to contract with the IPL teams next year; the ECB pulled out of their invitation to Zimbabwe to tour to England; SLC signed up to tour to England instead; and SLC now want their top players to go to England instead of playing for the IPL. The Daily News says the players are reluctant to meet the SLC:

The Minister of Sports and Recreation Gamini Lokuge yesterday appointed Duleep Mendis Chief Executive Officer of Sri Lanka Cricket to mediate and resolve the crisis between the SLC Interim Committee and the players who have signed to play in next year’s Indian Premier League Twenty20 tournament.

The second session of the high profile Indian Premier League Twenty20 tournament will clash with Sri Lanka’s tour to England next year and the Minister was expected to deliver the final verdict following a discussion with both parties.

However the Minister was forced to delay the final decision as the players had informed their inability to attend the meeting. As a result Duleep Mendis former Sri Lanka captain and the Chief Executive Officer of the SLC took over the responsibilities of finding a solution for this issue.

The Daily Mirror writes that the players---Jayawardene, Muralitharan, and Jayasuriya, among others---are considering retirement:

SLC sources said that the cricketers had refused to budge and had warned that they are ready to take even extreme measures such as contemplating retirement from national team to honour the IPL contracts they have already signed, if they have no other choice. They have reportedly pointed out that the England tour was hastily arranged later by SLC officials without consulting the cricketers who were under IPL contracts.

The future of cricket will be about a combination of city based Twenty20 cricket and the occasinoal game of Test cricket. This is probably a good thing.

ICC finds some soap

dcsiva — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:12:00 GMT

The ICC has compromised again on the Zimbabwe question. In terms of the internal voting bloc logic the decision certainly makes sense. From the BCCI's point of view, that is. Here's Kevin Mitchell for the Guardian on the moral argument:

While cricket was never going to solve the political problems of Zimbabwe, nor were the International Cricket Council going to have the courage to take a wider moral stance, even in the face of atrocities, starvation and the daily spectacle of a nation cowed by a dictator. As an ICC spokesman said: 'We are not mandated to talk about politics.' Or death, it seems.

What matters to the ICC is they have been saved from making a judgment call (which they would have fudged by suspending Zimbabwe temporarily because 'they are not good enough'), and England don't lose their big-money gig. While England and South Africa suspended cricket relations with Zimbabwe last week, the ICC, their strings pulled by the Asian bloc, are adamant Zimbabwe will keep full membership and funding. All that has been saved is a tournament. Nothing else changes.

A Cricketing View attempts to separate out the moral and the sporting issues at stake:

If the ICC's consideration of the matter can be criticized, it is because they did Cricket a disservice in the arguments that they considered. In my view, Robert Mugabe's methods ought not to be discussed at an ICC meeting, any more than the issue of Kashmir should be discussed there. It is none of the ICC's business. If at all Zimbabwe was to be stripped of full member nation status, it should have been because they have a very weak cricket team which is clearly not good enough to be a Test team (much like Bangladesh). This would have been a discussion of cricketing interest.

Q has a blow by blow fly-on-the-wall account of the meeting. Meanwhile Michael Holding quits from the ICC's Cricket Committee because of their other big decision: making the England Pakistan game at the Oval into a draw. And lastly, but by no means least, Cricket Australia's James Sutherland fires off a shot at the whole idea of private ownership of cricket teams (but, then, what is the BCCI or the MCC anyway if not private?).

Fairy tale ending and business beginning

dcsiva — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:06:00 GMT

Lots of articles on the IPL of course, usually pushing the "IPL = Bollywood + cricket" angle. The BBC News article includes all the little incidents during the tournament, the Hindustan Times pushes "cricketainment." Rahul Bhattacharya mentions the branding issue at the Guardian:

Cricket had never seen such a PR blitz. Journalists, commentators, players, coaching staff were all first IPL spokespersons. In newspapers the IPL was covered every day on the front page, the city pages, the celeb pages, the business pages, apart from monopolising the sports pages.

If the corporate money pumped into the tournament gave it the profile, it also brought with it a grating intrusiveness. A six in the IPL, every 622 of them, was no longer a six, it was a 'DLF Maximum.' A sharp catch came branded as a 'Citi Moment Of Success'. Commentators tripped over each other to make these plugs. A future where a batsman executes a Toyota Front-Foot Drive against an Intel Faster One may not be the stuff of satire.

Dileep Premachandran and Srikanth talk a little more about the actual final game between Rajasthan and Chennai.
And the Times of India lays out the business case for the IPL in detail, with this titbit on ratings from the Hindu Business Line:

Broadcaster Sony Entertainment Television sold the 200-odd seconds saved from the inventory for the semi-finals and finals at rates of Rs 8-10 lakh each. “We can’t predict ratings, but given that a good match has gone up to 6-7 TRPs (television viewership ratings), we hope the finals to fetch us between 8-10 in vierwership ratings,” said Mr Rohit Gupta, President, Network Sales, Licensing and Telephony, Sony Entertainment Television.

According to media buyers, the DLF IPL is mopping up a significant amount from the market during the period. It’s a huge window, and unlike the World Cup, which takes place once in four years, the DLF IPLs will be an annual opportunity.

Finally, by no means last, Stuart MacGill has announced his retirement from Test cricket.

IPL fallout

dcsiva — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:23:00 GMT

Scorpicity argues that the IPL is really already over. The Royals won:

Seriously they have! Because how meaningless in context are these so-called knockout rounds in the name of Semi-finals and finals are in the IPL!

Why? Because a six league team just doesn't need a knock-out stage. A best of three final with the top two teams maybe. I think the deeper point may be that that all the narratives built around the different teams (Rajasthan are intelligent, Bangalore stupid, Kolkata fancy, etc.) are based on pretty flimsy grounds...not enough data.

Jagadish goes through all the injuries caused by playing over a month's worth of IPL. Hayden and Tendulkar stand out in particular:

All this makes me wonder if talk about international cricket being more important than the IPL is hogwash. If that indeed were the case, players wouldn't be risking aggravating injuries when they had international commitments immediately after the IPL ended.

And Sanjay posts news of the Indian ODI squad while the English counties start panicking over the ECB's trawling for ideas from broadcasters.

IPL league summaries

dcsiva — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:21:00 GMT

Q writes his 4th quarter report with not much time left for the start of the first semi-final. Shaun Marsh and Sohail Tanvir stand out with the bat and ball respectively, and Q picks out Piyush Chawla's excellent bowling too:

One man hasn't made his international debut yet, while the other is barely 8 months old in international cricket.

Yet Shaun Marsh and Sohail Tanvir are at the top of the leading run scorers and leading wicket takers at the end of the group stages of the Indian Premier League.
...
Its interesting to note the similarity between Warne's and Chawla's figures - same number of wickets, similar average, a similar economy rate (7.9 and 8.3 respectively), and exactly the same strike rate of 15.5!
One is the master leg spinner, arguably the best bowler ever to play test cricket. While the other is trying to cement his place in international cricket.
Yuvraj recently said that Chawla has always delivered when asked to.
That's true. He has consistently picked up wickets and checked the scoring of the opposition.

Rajneesh Gupta has a good statistical summary. The thing that stands out the most is the lack of value in all that information given the small number of matches and the haphazard nature of Twenty20.

Meanwhile, Suresh Menon writes about the IPL's spin doctors. And the BBC writes about the ECB's upcoming meeting about reforming county cricket. What are the bets that they'll do nothing much?

Youthful IPL and competitive Tests

dcsiva — Mon, 26 May 2008 05:30:00 GMT

What are the consequences of the IPL for selection to the Indian ODI side? Dileep writes about the battle between youth and age in the IPL:

It's interesting to note that only Rohit Sharma of the youth brigade has scored more IPL runs [404] than Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, neither of whom played a part in the CB Series victory in Australia. Despite the Royal Challengers' dismal showing, and allegations of them being a Test side, Dravid has aggregated 360 runs at a strike-rate of 127.65. Ganguly has managed 11 runs less, though his strike-rate is nowhere near as impressive [113.68].

To get an idea of how well Dravid had adjusted to the demands of the format, just compare his numbers to those of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who succeeded him as one-day captain. Dhoni's 348 runs have come only at a marginally quicker rate [129.85].

Of the middle-order pretenders, the uncapped Shikhar Dhawan is next in the list, but his 335 runs have hardly come at breakneck speed [118.37]. The most instructive comparison though is with Uthappa, who has barely scored faster than Ganguly [298 runs and a strike-rate of 116.86] despite his reputation as a devastator of bowling attacks.

Kartikeya points out that the two Test matches going on are over-shadowing the IPL finish. Sean is looking forward to what would certainly be an historic win for the West Indies against Australia. And Kolkata pull off a good win against Kings Punjab.

Chanders, football and teeth

dcsiva — Sat, 24 May 2008 21:52:00 GMT

Sean points out that Chanderpaul's record over the last year puts him in Bradman territory. He was pretty unorthodox too, of course. Vir Sanghvi writes about the European Cup Final, club loyalties, and what's inevitably in store for cricket, via the IPL:

One objection could be that it blurs loyalties. How can the citizens of Bombay believe that Sanath Jayasuriya or Shaun Pollock truly represent them?

I don’t know. But clearly they do believe that. If the IPL fever has taught us anything, it is that fans will love any player, no matter what his race, religion or nationality, as long as he plays well.

That’s true of the Premiership too. No Chelsea fan cares that the only connection such players as Florent Malouda or Claude Makelele have with their city is professional. As far as they are concerned, they are all Chelsea players now. Manchester fans applauded Cristiano Ronaldo when he scored United’s only goal in the Moscow final. He was as much a player in their team as the very English Wayne Rooney (who ended up being substituted towards the end of the game).

And, with James Anderson's bouncer taking out Daniel Flynn's teeth, here's a report on county player Dave Fulton nearly losing his eye from a bowling machine bouncer.

Accounting money; and an unhappy 25th anniversary?

dcsiva — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:31:00 GMT

Amit Varma pursues a favourite theme on the IPL. That big money brings accountability:

What the IPL setup guarantees is that it isn't just Vijay Mallya's players who are accountable to him - Mallya himself is accountable to the market. If Mallya manages his team badly, it will perform badly, and his franchise's bottomline will take a hit. Had Charu Sharma been in the wrong, he would have been held accountable by Mallya, point proved. But if the poor man was blameless, then Mallya will be held accountable by market forces.

The IPL is not just a competition between cricketers. It is also a competition between management styles. Contrast Bangalore and Mumbai, for example. Both had a similarly bad start to the tournament - if anything, Mumbai's was worse, what with their acting captain, Harbhajan Singh, involved in Slapgate. But the management of both teams handled it differently.

The disparity between the owners' wealth and the players' lack of bargaining power suggests that other players will flock to him if he simply spends yet more money next year (when the caps are removed). That sort of accountability at least won't work at all.

In a great post on the upcoming 25th anniversary of India winning the World Cup, Dileep Premachandran in effect talks of another kind of accountability. What responsibility does the BCCI owe to that great team? Can they wash their hands of the celebrations just because of the "rebel" ICL angle?

Strange indeed are the ways of Indian cricket. A nation's real cricket culture can be gauged from the way it treats its heroes. The respect with which Australia and its cricket officials treated the late Bill Brown was a great lesson for everyone connected with the game in India. Each time I saw the reverence with which he was welcomed at the Gabba, I'd remember sitting with BS Chandrasekhar, architect of India's first great overseas win (The Oval, 1971) in a run-down club in a far-from-posh suburb of Bangalore, eating a greasy omelette from a plate that hadn't been washed properly.

It shouldn't be that way. But BCCI eyes that have been blinded by the colour of money don't see that. Not that it matters. The likes of Sunny and Kapil don't need validation from some petty, no-name officials. Those whose lives they changed forever a quarter of a century ago will honour them in their own way. And it'll probably mean a whole lot more than an open-top bus ride down to board HQ.

Finally, Jrod argues convincingly that Ramprakash making it to a hundred first class hundreds should be seen as a mark of failure. If he had played Test cricket regularly, he wouldn't have had the time to make so many hundreds. And the Economic Times has a graph of support across the metros for different IPL teams.

Race and the IPL

dcsiva — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:15:00 GMT

Allegations of racism in the IPL surface again. This time two black cheerleaders from Britain say that a marketing official tried to prevent them from performing because they're black. Here's rediffs coverage:

Newton and Sherinne Anderson, who alleged that they were asked to leave the Mohali ground without performing on April 19 because their "skin is too dark", addressed the press in Mumbai on Thursday along with Jorge Aldana, director of Fierce Performance Production, which employs the girls as dancers. Wizcraft has been hired by actress Preity Zinta for her Indian Premier League team, the Punjab Kings XI.
After being removed from the grounds, Newton told rediff.com that a Wizcraft employee used the highly derogatory term "***" as part of his explanation for why the girls couldn't perform. "Of course," she explained, "tears soon followed. I was in a state of shock." When asked if there were witnesses, both Newton and Anderson answered in the affirmative. Not only did fellow teammates see and hear the dispute, they said, but members of the crowd also overhead the offensive comments and saw them sobbing.

Scorpicity draws out the inconsistency involved in backing Harbhajan in Australia and yet also Shilpa Shetty in England while not backing these cheerleaders. Follow the link for an interesting set of comments.

Disenchantment and money

dcsiva — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:50:00 GMT

Mohan is a little disenchanted with the IPL, worrying about its length and ability to generate fan following, while Richard wants to rethink the league format of county cricket to make it more competitive. Continuing in the rethinking mode but this time on the relationship between the IPL and all the money swilling around, the Business Standard has interviews on accountability, the Hindu on outsourcing marketing in the IPL, and Partab Ramchand somehow concludes that cricket is no longer a sport:

Cricket is no longer a sport, it is a business and that point has just been driven home by the failures of two high-profile teams and the reactions to their disastrous campaigns.

What's the contradiction? Lastly, in this series of links, Vivek Chaudhary contrasts money in the English Premiership and in the IPL.

Ottayan links to Robin's link to a touching Times of India story on Gony.

IPL quarter end report and Kashmiri loyalties

dcsiva — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:37:00 GMT

Q puts together his Third Quarter report on the IPL:

Some people questioned that the length of the tournament, 45 days to be exact, would be taxing on the viewers who would lose interest. Nothing like that has happened and Q3 was witnessed with the same packed crowds and large number of TV viewers as Q1 and Q2.

With Q4 expected to be the most exciting quarter of the IPL, and the RACE to the Final Four in its concluding stages, expect the interest of the viewers to remain high, if not higher than the preceding quarters.

And the Indian Express reports on changing loyalties in Kashmir. Cricket was the site on which Kashmiri nationalism first expressed itself but the IPL and Mohammad Mudasir might be changing all that:

Mudasir was discovered during a pace hunt conducted by Javagal Srinath and T A Sekar of the MRF pace foundation at Sher-e-Kashmir Stadium, Srinagar in 2006. He represented the J&K under-19 team last season and bagged 35 wickets.
Mudasir has not yet made his debut but IPL has already confused the decades-old cricket loyalties in Kashmir which were always an expression of separatist politics here.
The cricket pitch was, in fact, the first platform for separatist politics. On October, 13, 1983 when West Indies came to play India in Srinagar, the separatists dug the pitch to protest. The police arrested Mushtaq-ul-Islam and Showkat Bakhshi — who later became militant commanders — inside the stadium while Hurriyat leader Shabir Shah too was charge-sheeted.

Finally, The Atheist and King Cricket write about Jacob Oram's wonderful clean hitting century that saved face for New Zealand.

Team spirits and beers

dcsiva — Sun, 18 May 2008 13:36:00 GMT

Homer reports that England's players are not happy about playing in a winner-takes-all care of Stanford. From the Daily Mail article Homer links to:

The players are keen to take part in the annual big-money match at Stanford's private ground in Antigua, and an annual quadrangular tournament in England, featuring the hosts, the All-Star XI and two other international sides, initially from Pakistan, Sri Lanka or New Zealand. But the prospect of winning — or losing — such an enormous sum of money as £10m, perhaps on the misfortune of a dropped catch or the outcome of the last ball of the game, has proved too much.

Why? They fear that it will effect team cohesiveness. In a similar move, much to Miss Field's consternation, the Aussies went so far as to wear VB caps so that poor old baggy green-less Brad Haddin wouldn't feel left out during a tour game:

Former Australian player Greg Matthews has told News Limited publications that he would never have abandoned the traditional baggy green cap in favour of a sponsors cap.
"Money talks," Matthews said. "You're selling your pride, selling the baggy green. It just cheapens things.
"If someone said to me I had to wear a VB hat, I'd tell them to piss off," he continued emotionally.
Cricket Australia's public affairs manager, Philip Pope, said that the decision was made for the sake of uniformity, with commercial considerations not coming into it.

Anyone want to ask Vijay Mallya about team cohesiveness? Finally, Ottayan lists the terms of the IPL contracts and argues that they're loaded in favour of the players.

Moneyed batting and philosophical cricket

dcsiva — Sat, 17 May 2008 14:57:00 GMT

Sanath Jayasuriya strikes again. Ottayan reports that Kevin Pietersen will sign up for next year's IPL for as much as 2 million pounds! The article Ottayan linked to suggests:

An ECB insider told Sportsmail that the final decision on all centrally-contracted players heading for the IPL will be in the hands of England coach Peter Moores but that, in Pietersen's case, they will not stand in his way.
That means the Hampshire batsman is likely to head to India virtually as soon as England return from their tour of the West Indies at the start of next April and play in the IPL for three weeks to a month before returning to prepare for the World Twenty20 tournament in England. After that will be the small matter of the Ashes.

And why would Pietersen be such a special case? The New York Times carries on its fascination with cricket in New York, writing about a novelist who in turn has written about cricket:

He has clung to cricket, he said recently, because it’s his “athletic mother tongue,” and to learn baseball, say, would be like taking up a foreign language. Even if he became proficient, he wouldn’t get the jokes or the poetry.
...
Mr. O’Neill’s new book, “Netherland” (Pantheon), identifies the Staten Island Cricket Club by name, though not any of its players, and there’s a long description of Walker Park, the club’s home ground since 1876, a bumpy, crabgrass-ridden expanse just a block from the Kill Van Kull. It’s bordered now by tennis courts, a baseball field, a children’s playground and, beyond a chain-link fence, some Victorian houses that are occasionally bombarded by cricket balls, little red meteors crashing through front windows or cratering into flower beds.

Finally, Samir Chopra calls for all and any philosophical treatises on cricket.