IPL Season II - Day 1
April 19th 2009 04:01
I must confess I am not a great T20 fan. Lets just say I think cricket can also be a bowlers' game. It need not be a slugfest filled with boundaries and sixes with the bowlers chipping in just for relief or even for some sort of comic act. So you get no extra points for guessing that the IPL was not the top item on my cricket programs to watch list. When I say I am not a great fan, it is not that I do not watch the games. Any form of cricket has my attention - the game's got me by the throat! It is just that I believe Test matches showcase the game and the players' skill quotient far better - yeah, even the skills of the long suffering bowlers.
Then IPL season II happened. My expectations had not changed too much. I have been thinking about the putoffs that can leave a die-hard cricket fan like me somewhat miffed with a version of the game I celebrate and worship. I have almost come to the conclusion that it is that faint air of irreverence which the T20 brings along with it. Be it the cheerleaders and the whole hype that comes along with them or the utter disregard that batsman display in these games and which they carefully train themselves for or the commercials - the only notorious constant in these wham-bam-thank-you-ma'm contests full of hyperbole and most often devoid of consideration or observation. Commentary in these games can be one long set of involuntary reactions and exlamations. So what is different about IPL season II? I dont know. Not for sure right now. But the two games that I saw yesterday left me with warm feelings in my heart.
Yesterday's games may not have been very frenetic and therefore probably was not very exciting for the masses that so prefer T20 cricket. Maybe its precisely that reason why I liked the action on offer. After all one could not help but enjoy the fare that was dished out. First by a man who is probably the greatest ever cricketer to have graced this planet - Sachin Tendulkar and then followed up by the inimitable, peerless Rahul Dravid. To this display the icing on the cake and probably the factor that contributed to that warm feeling in me was a subtly stupefying spell of legspin bowling - one each actually from two of the greatest exponents of this art. Shane Warne reduces, or is 'elevates' the right word, the game to mere poetry when he walks in and twirls the ball in directions nobody can dream of. In the air or off the wicket - and there you have the consummate wicket taking machine, never mind the version of the game. This was followed by a 5 wicket spell by Anil Kumble. The genial Indian's craft may not have been as openly mesmeric as Warne's but dont let the professional and carefully groomed approach fool you. There was a lot of craft to Kumble's bowling - as exemplified by his dismissal of Warne. A perfectly pitched googly which beats the world's best ever leg spinner cannot be easy to bowl!
On the first day of IPL season II, runs were hard to come by. And precisely for that reason better cricket was seen. Better sense prevailed. Batsmen actually had to play some proper cricket. And consequently cricket was not reduced to being a form of baseball - only one where the pitchers, er, bowlers, pitch the ball on the ground before it gets to the batters, er the batsmen. Some of it had to do with the change in venue for the IPL. A lot of sections in India have been very disappointed with this change in venue and rightly so. An 'Indian' Premier League has as much meaning as the French Open being conducted in New York. But then, special circumstances demand special solutions. And the IPL being held anywhere in the world was a better proposition, obviously to all the stakeholders, than the tournament not being held at all. What started as the best compromise could actually go on and do much good to the tournament and maybe eventually even to T20 as a whole. However, these could turn out to be very early misleading symptoms too - I wholeheartedly submit. But the point is, I enjoyed the game and the reason was that there were two facets of the game on display - batting and bowling. This is what cricket is - 5 days or 3 hours, it really does not matter. And that made viewership all the more richer.
In the first contest, in seaming and swinging conditions, Tendulkar held the Mumbai innings together with a polish, composed and well constructed, unbeaten half century. The Chennai team had no adequate answer even though they had the luxury of not having to bat first in these conditions. Experience and pure, old fashioned batting skill mattered yesterday. Mumbai also had help from a lovely Abhishek Nayar cameo consisting of three sixes in one Flintoff over. The last one - an off balance slap in front of an averted face was awkward but exhilarating. It made a point about how even as one part of the human body was taking defensive action, the other part (the arms) simply did what they could to combat. The attack was initiated and the arms went through - whether the batsman saw the ball at the point of contact or not. Not surprisingly only Hayden from the Chennai Super Kings could muster up some resistance. And hey, he fulfilled the criterion of the day. Only batsmen in their late thirties were successful!
The second contest was even better. It was dominated by the bowlers and was much better for it. After being 0 for 2, the Bangalore Royal Challengers slipped, slithered and finally charged to get their total into the 130's. Decent if unspectactular, certainly. This was wholly due to one Rahul Dravid - he, the much maligned leader of the same outfit in the last season. What is sadder is that the fact that he was among the tournament's top run getters last season goes virtually unnoticed by many of the critics. The Hindu, a daily in India went one step ahead by saying to the effect that he had a poor outing last season. His team had a very poor outing yes, but not Dravid as a player. And yes, it is worth making out the difference. Barring brief support from Pietersen, Dravid had no partners to speak of. He started off serenely, yet fluently - with glances, flicks and controlled drives and then opened up with full blooded cover drives and even one stunning launch into wide long on for a huge six in the last over. Everything was done with consummate grace and it was all proper cricket. Yet, runs were scored at a fast clip - strike rate was touching the 140s. And yes, all this was done in the face of Warne mocking and teasing the batsmen with 4 overs of imaginative and inventive spin. So, yes, it was all easy on the eyes. Dravid's animosity after reaching his 50 and his vigorous pointing at the pavilion (or whatever it is they call those contraptions that everybody in the team sits on in this form of the game - some baseball term, I would venture to guess) is to be noted. It is plain that he was miffed at not being given credit as a player for his performance last season. Evidently Dravid need not be out of the race when it comes to limited overs cricket. He can swing it with the best of them - only in a more genteel fashion, with stunning results. One for you, Chika (Srikkanth is the Chairman of Selectors for the Indian cricket team).
The total did look gettable - especially considering that the Royals were the defending champions. But owing to two timely strikes from the crafty Praveen Kumar and then to some unexplainable brain dead shot selection from its middle order, not to mention the guile and persistence of Anil Kumble, the defending champions fell far short of the target. They were never in danger of eclipsing the total, actually and their overall performance with the bat can only be described as meek. But then that is the game. You win one day and lose very badly the next. Only he who gets up first and dusts himself off to join the race, stays in it. The rest get left behind. Knowing Warne the Royals probably started the dusting off process yesterday evening!
And folks not everything was fantastic yesterday - it was not funny that a dog (one that looked like a Belgian Malinois was involved somewhere in its ancestry) held the entire security crew at ransom and stopping play for more than a quarter of an hour! And neither was the fumbling and bumbling of Ravi Shastri, with the mike, later on during the inaguration ceremony good to see. And hey, add in that bit of incongruity when Dhoni stopped the toss from happening when the coin was just about to be thrown up only to have a team change done and you would think that Day 1 of IPL Season II was a comedy of errors. Well, these were all examples of ineptness in one way or the other, but the quality of cricket yesterday obliterated most of these piffling things. And that can only be good! Who knows - yours truly may soon start rooting for T20 games!
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Comment by Raji
Comment by Balachandhran S
Tricolour Prism
Bala
Comment by Raji
Comment by Balachandhran S
Tricolour Prism
Raji,
Well, I kind of have the opposite sort of viewpoint which should not come as a surprise for you.
The difference between Test and T20 cricket is something like the difference between a song in WAV format in the original audio CD and the same song in MP3 format. The latter is highly compressed. The highest and lowest frequencies are absent. To notice the difference you have to listen closely, yes. But the difference is certainly there.
As far as the game being a test of skills of the players, Test matches are the pinnacle. As far as entertainment (even for the non-cricket savvy public goes) T20 is the king. So, I guess it has to be a horses for courses policy that ought to be followed by the ICC.
I kind of see T20's as the ideal entry point to enjoying the deep game that is cricket. People new to the game could get initiated via T20 and then go on to sample greater depth, deeper strategies and more intensity and intricacy offered by the Tests and ODI matches.