Twenty 20 Blog

29th of May saw a couple of relatively close games in the North and the South division, as well had the defending champions go down for the third time in a row to diminish their chances of making it to the quarter-finals to almost close to negligible.

North Division

The war of the roses saw Yorkshire go down to Lancashire rather easily, after it had won the toss and elected to bat first. The slowness of the pitch, combined with some really poor stroke-play saw Yorkshire collapse to 111/8 in their 20, thanks mainly to their Kolpak-signing, Jacques Rudolph (38), who batted through the inning. He had no support as the batsmen struggled against Sajid Mahmood – this season’s quickest bowler so far – and skipper Glen Chapple. Former English skipper Michael Vaughan scored 16, before being scalped by Chapple. In response, Tom Smith and Paul Horton warded off any early efforts to woo them into playing strokes, while Steven Croft hit an unbeaten 40 to guide Lancashire through.

It was an important game for Durham and Leicestershire, with the latter going into the game without a win. But Durham’s last-ball loss meant that they share the bottom slot with Yorkshire and Leicestershire. They managed to score a reasonable 144/8 in their twenty overs, after it initially they may not get even 120. But the late sparkle sown by Gareth Breese – 37 in 15 with seven boundaries and a six – also meant that the pitch had considerably eased up. Debutant Alex Wyatt bagged 3/14 in his four overs. Leicestershire’s reply was good, as former English stumper, Paul Nixon combined with James Allenby to score 53 apiece, but for

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The excitement of the IPL begins not when the first ball is bowled, but before that when the pre-season auction of cricketing talent takes place.

The rich and famous owners descend on Goa for a televised, financial fist fight that may determine the fate of their team for the season. Conjecture over which franchises will bid for which stars and speculation on how high the price of the best players will go is rife.

But it is only now that the dust has settled on the second season of the IPL that we can properly assess the winners and losers from this year’s auction.

The English are coming

The England team had of course been excluded from the first season of the IPL and their arrival was one of the main talking points of the second auction, particularly the team’s two superstars Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen.

The pair promptly became the joint most expensive IPL players ever, signing for Chennai and Bangalore for $1,550,000 each.

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The face of cricket, as it had been known to the pundits, has been almost irreversibly altered by a format of the game, which had been scoffed at to begin with as another one akin to the one found in a charity game, but has since then, been accepted by the majority. And what a turnaround it has been. Right from those times when the English cricket board introduced the Twenty20s to sway the crowds back into the stadiums to the BCCI rejecting the format and then reluctantly sending a team to the first edition of the ICC World Twenty20, followed by the glamour and the glitz of the IPL interspersed with the other controversial leagues in the ICL and the Stanford tournaments, Twenty20 has come a long way.

Not only has the general public’s interest at large, or the bank accounts of the players in particular been beefed up, but to play devil’s advocate – as a self-respecting lover of test cricket – there isn’t too much doubt that Twenty20s have assisted cricket in general.

From ‘test’ of patience to batting ferocities

Gone are the days when a dour-looking Geoffrey Boycott could prod and plonk his way to a century after playing through majority of the test match and then have Sunil Gavaskar return back the compliment and test the patience of both, the opposition bowling and the ground audiences to the hilt. Tons in only a

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Amidst sparse crowds and cries of overkill of cricket, the first day of the Twenty20 Cup saw three of the games going right down to the wire, one that had bad light ending play and another that saw the defending champions being dumped by the wayside!

North Division

Out of the six teams, four were in action and both games were a ripper. Nottinghamshire were beaten off the last delivery of the game by Durham, thanks to impressive half centuries by international discards, Ian Blackwell and Dale Benkenstein. The latter’s dismissal did ensue a later collapse, but Mitchell Claydon smashed a four off the last delivery to seal a narrow one wicket win. This, after only one run was needed at the start of the final over!

The other game had last season’s disqualified team, Yorkshire, huffing and puffing to a victory with only a ball to spare. After having restricted the Leicestershire inning to a modest 148/3 in the 20 overs thanks to Hylton Ackerman’s half century, Yorkshire began well but made heavy weather of chasing down the total. 110/2 became 125/7 and with 22 required in the final two overs, the game looked to have gone begging. Michael Vaughan scored a 30-ball 35 to signal his intentions before the Ashes. However, Ajmal Shahzad smashed a 16 off the penultimate over, and scampered around for the remaining six runs and pouched the game.

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The second season of the IPL promised more interest for English cricket fans than the first for the simple reason that some of the many stars shining in the competition might be from their shores.

England’s finest had been kept out of the IPL last year by the ECB, although Dimitri Mascarenhas had played for the Rajasthan Royals during the inaugural season.

This year a window of opportunity was opened for them to play in the early part of the competition and a number of players put themselves forward for the second IPL auction.

IPL Auction

In the end five England players were bought at the auction, Owais Shah, Paul Collingwood, Ravi Bopara, Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen (the last two for the record sums of $1,550,000 each).

The message boards soon filled up, how would the five perform? Could Freddie and KP justify their price tags? Would they pick up new skills? Would England benefit? How about their counties?

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In the end, there wasn’t much to choose from between the two sides, but as Andrew Symonds had remarked before the start of the game, the team that held its nerve better under pressure would be the one to make it through to embossing its name on the trophy. As it turned out, it was Symonds’ words of wisdom that came absolutely true, as his Deccan Chargers scraped through to a narrow, six-run victory over the Royal Challengers Bangalore!

It must be said that the game was there for the Royal Challengers to take at the half-way stage. A target of 144 was all that the team from Bangalore had to get to, and in this format of the game, it was a below-par score. Yet, the pressure of the situation and a track that could have been termed as a double-paced one, seemed to have got into the psyche of the batsmen as most of them froze when it really mattered.

It began with the early loss of Jacques Kallis, but the turning point for me during the inning was the manner in which the top-scorer for Bangalore in the previous two games – Manish Pandey – was kept away from the strike. So much so, that six overs into the inning, Pandey had faced only seven deliveries! His eighth saw him attempt to vent his frustration out, only managing to cut the Pragyan Ojha delivery to the wicket-keeper.

Reold van der Merwe provided a little comic relief amidst the tension that could was palpably visible around the stadium as he edged and nicked, danced and jumped and even dived at the non-striker’s stumps to have them flat. This is not to say that he did not perform well, in fact, outscoring his more illustrious team-mates with a 21-ball 32, but once he was stumped by Gilchrist, there wasn’t much in the form of aggression.

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A superb batting performance from the Banglalore Royal Challengers fired them past the Chennai Super Kings and into the 2009 IPL final.

The second semi largely followed the script of the first with the lower ranked team restricting the favourites batting to a manageable target then cruising past it with plenty to spare.

After losing the toss and being put in first Chennai wickets fell at regular intervals and they could only manage a steady rather than spectacular scoring rate.

The target of 146 always looked achievable and so it proved for a Challengers team who will return to the New Wanderers tomorrow to face the Deccan Chargers in the final.

Although Bangalore lost the early wickets of South Africans Jacques Kallis and Roleof van der Merwe the match looked in little doubt once Rahul Dravid had joined Manish Pandey in the middle. The pair shared a stand of 72 that swung the game decisively in the Challengers favour.

At first Dravid played the anchor role he has become synonymous with while Pandey blazed away at Albie Morkel, Shadab Jakati and Manpreet Goly – the latter being clubbed for almost 12 an over.

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A majestic performance from captain Adam Gilchrist saw the Deccan Chargers book their place as the first team in the 2009 IPL final.

The Aussie legend hit a scintillating 85 off 35 deliveries, in what was an exhibition of aggressive batting. His match-winning performance, that included 10 fours and five sixes, put the match beyond doubt early into the Chargers’ reply.

Coming into the match, the odds could not have been more heavily stacked against the Chargers. They finished bottom of last year’s inaugural competition. Conversely, the Delhi Daredevils finished top of the table, going into the knockout stages.

The atmosphere at the SuperSport Park was tangible as openers Gautam Gambhir and David Warner took to the crease for the Devils, and the action did not disappoint. Ryan Harris came storming in to dismiss both men in the very first over.

With the Devils on the back foot, faith rested in the reliable figures of Virender Sehwag and Tillekeratne Dilshan. Both demonstrated their world class attacking capabilities, rallying to take the Devils to 83-2 at the halfway point. However, in the following over, Sehwag was given lbw after Andrew Symonds trapped him on his stumps.

Even with AB de Villiers and Dinesh Karthik on hand to assist with the run building, some consistent and disciplined bowling limited the favourites to a rather modest 153-8 at the end of the innings.

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When Zimbabwe upset the world cup champions Australia in the previous edition of the ICC World Twenty20, the celebrations were impromptu, almost akin to the side having won a world cup themselves. This time around Zimbabwe will not participate in the ICC World Twenty20, due to political reasons or otherwise – and I shall touch upon them in brief later – but that has meant that another associate nation, Scotland, join Ireland and Netherland as the three qualifiers for the tournament.

Minnow History

If one looks at the history of all the world cups that have been held, and I talk about the longer format of the game here, there have been enough instances that have seen a minnow-nation – in the context of that tournament – take out a giant killer; Sri Lanka had beaten India in 1979, India themselves went on to stun West Indies twice in 1983, in 1996, the Kenyans shocked an already disjointed West Indian side, while they went on to get to the semi-finals of the 2003 World Cup as well. And the last tournament has already witnessed the sad story of India and Pakistan crashing out after going down to Bangladesh and Ireland respectively.

The reason why I dug those historical examples out is that I certainly believe that if games of the longer duration can be won by the gross underdogs, then the aforementioned likes of Ireland, Netherland and Scotland could very well go into the tournament with reasonable confidence.

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If there was ever a Twenty20 final that could have matched the excitement of the last game of the 2007 edition of ICC World Twenty20, it had to be the finals of the previous season’s Twenty20 Cup in England. The game went right down to the proverbial wire, and in unfortunate circumstances, Justin Kemp failed to garner the requisite Miandadesque strength to smash the ball out of the park to see his team through; instead ending vanquished by a meagre margin of three runs.

Previous season’s shenanigans

Not too many knew what lay in store for them ahead, especially when the Middlesex skipper Ed Joyce won the toss and elected to bat first in a pressure game at the Rose Bowl.

Yasir Arafat – who would go on to top the bowling charts for most wickets – had an early success in the form of B. Godleman, but Joyce and Tyron Henderson exhibited enough fire-power to go after the bowling and take the score to 47 by the time the fielding restrictions were lifted. Unfortunately, Joyce nicked one to the ‘keeper, and the score read 47/2 at that stage.

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