So, Sahara has once again successfully bid for the Indian team sponsorship. Nice. Sorry, it’s the official sponsors for only the Indian men’s team and not the Women’s team or U-19 or India-A. But why? Because “the group was not interested in spending an extra Rs 10-15 crore”, it seems. They are willing to spend nearly 492 crores for the men’s team, but want to save 15 crores when it comes to the other Indian teams. Fine. But how do they measure their ROI on these sponsorship and on what criteria did they decide to spend 492 crores on one and not spend 10-15 cr on another? Let’s not forget that they had recently bought a franchise in IPL for $370 mio (approximately 1740 Crores).
The group’s presentation in the website proudly advertises their association with sports, including Indian women’s cricket team, U-19 and India-A team. Now, where did that pride go? Or because they didn’t see value in it, this time? Fair enough, now come out and show us the valuation for the Pune bid? Hang on, Which group of Sahara is paying for this, anyway? Are public shareholder's money being utilised for this purpose?
The group’s presentation also proudly announces their overall CSR spending(some 655 crores or something), good. So, the management is earning Karma points by leveraging on the shareholders’ money (I am assuming their CSR spending also includes that of the group's listed entities), very good. Gideon Haigh had written a brilliant article about Corporate Governance in Cricinfo today, but he’s far ahead of the curve. Let’s sort out the corporate governance mess at the corporate level first, before we can move onto BCCI and other Cricket Boards.
Let me leave the corporate governance mess out of a Cricket blog for a bit, and quote the break up of the sponsorship amount for different formats of the game now:
“Under the terms of the previous deal, Sahara paid Rs 1.91 crores ($ 412,000) per Test, Rs 2.09 crores ($ 455,000) per ODI and Rs 1.57 crores ($ 340,000) per Twenty20. The new price is the same across all three formats, and more than doubles the price of a Twenty20 game, highlighting its appeal and popularity” – excerpt from Cricinfo.
Let’s conservatively assume it costs Sahara Rs.3 crores to sponsor the team for a T-20 game. And compare that with Rs.1.91 crores for a test match. Now, ask yourself this question? Despite considering the dwindling interest (personally I don’t think so, but let’s live with that narrative fallacy for now) in Test Cricket and the rise in popularity of T-20, what’s the premium that one should pay for a T-20 over a test match? 57% premium seems reasonable (3-1.91/1.91), but that’s not a fair comparison. Let’s make it an apple-apple comparison.
A test match generally has 5*6=30 hours of Cricket, whereas a T-20 has hardly 3 hrs of Cricket. So let’s convert the sponsorship amount into per hour unit. As a measure of conservatism, let me take the avg no.of hrs in a test as 24 hrs, leaving a day for rain, early finish et al. Per hour sponsorship amount for Tests – Rs.7.96 lacs per hour and per hour sponsorship amount for T20 – Rs.1 crore per hour. That’s a whopping 1157% premium over a test match. It’s not even funny, this bubble. Apart from the huge premium, T-20 investment is also more risky, imagine the cost of an abandoned T-20 for the company!
PS: As an aside, I find this whole sponsorship thing weird. Why would a group with businesses which are primarily high-involvement purchases from the customer’s point of view, spend so much on sponsoring a cricket team? With a company like Nike, it’s a direct connection. Even with Pepsi and a celebrity, its fine - they are low involvement purchases which can be influenced by people you look upto. Extend that to cars, they may be high involvement purchases but they are again fairly personal choices, So I may have an inclination (albeit a lesser inclination than say in the case of buying a Nike T-Shirt) to go for the car which Federer endorses, either because I like Federer and/or because I believe Federer endorses a product which performs like how he does on a tennis court. These decisions are not the most rational but we all make such decisions. But housing, insurance, jute, townships? You are kidding me. Outside of their media biz, Celebrities don’t help Sahara much in improving business performance. Even for the media biz, film personalities are a better and probably cheaper bet than a Cricket team.
Showing posts with label IPL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IPL. Show all posts
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Of India’s debacle and the IPL
There seems to be no end to the post-mortem analysis of India’s exit from World T-20. Some of them have been objective but most of them have been outrageously over the top. To begin with, I must state that I am highly skeptical of this analysis-paralysis surrounding T-20 performances. Going by the record in both int’l cricket & IPL so far and common-sense, it appears way too random to draw any definitive conclusion. India won the inaugural world T-20 when no one expected us to win and have been struggling to win a single match at the business end of the tournament, since then. Pakistan won the second edition but was almost knocked out of the tournament in super 8’s stage this year. And now, the 8th seed Australia (this alone is reason enough for us not to take T-20 results too seriously!) and of all teams England have made it to the finals! Has any team found the code to sustainable success in this format yet?
The story is not too different in IPL either. Rajasthan Royals won the first edition when they were least expected to. Next year, Deccan Chargers won the title after finishing last in the table, the previous year. This year, Mumbai looked good to take home the trophy, despite not being able to make it to the semi-finals in the last 2 years. Of course one can always point out CSK’s and Pakistan’s consistency in this format, but let’s not forget that a lot of things went in favour of Pakistan and CSK to make it to the SF of this year’s World T-20 and IPL respectively.
Does this mean, we can’t be critical of the team’s bad performance because of the inherent randomness prevalent in this format? Of course not. My only point is we shouldn’t go by the end results alone. For a problem with multiple causes, our media is guilty of navel gazing. They want to zero in on exactly those factors which resulted in our early exit. So conveniently they found the most easily bashable thing going around at the moment - it’s a free for all bashing - the IPL.
The media has built a nice story around IPL as if that’s the reason for our losses. How many of us want to be bluffed into this story that we were world beaters before and then the IPL beast came in and made us susceptible against short balls, made Dhoni a bad captain and fast tracked Ravindra Jadeja* into the playing XI? C’mon guys, outside of the Fab 3 and Sehwag (with his own methods), our batsmen have never taken a liking to the rising ball. Suresh Raina (who was a success in the World T-20) is the biggest culprit of them all. He’s spent close to 5 years in int’l cricket and can’t play good short bowling to save his life (that slog pull is not an improvement but a desperate measure). And what did the selectors do? Dropped him for the Champions Trophy in SA and brought in Rahul Dravid, only to induct him back for the next home series, giving Dravid the axe!
Another most debated point is about how Yusuf Pathan is only an IPL specialist and not fit for int’l cricket. What has IPL to do with it, if he’s not able to make the transition (Let’s not forget that he made his debut for India even before IPL came into existence). Ranadeb Bose was picking wickets at Hadlee’s rate in Ranji Trophy for a couple of years, but we all knew he would never be a great success at the int’l level, does that give us a right to blame the Ranji Trophy for it? I agree that we ought to, at a broader level, that the competitiveness of the Ranji Trophy is not great due to lack of adequate number of quality players and all that. But Ranji Trophy as a platform is doing what it can do best. What’s the point in denigrating it?
Similar is the case with IPL. Murali Vijay’s brilliant batting in IPL raised our expectations, but that’s what we expected, right? For god’s sake let’s admit that there is a world of difference between the quality of Cricket in IPL and int’l cricket. The other day - in “Yorker” (Yahoo’s Cricket Chat show) - I had to select what according to me would constitute the ideal T-20 team for India. After 8 names, I was struggling to fill up the team, I didn’t want Nehra in my team but had no other alternative, even worse had to go with Sreesanth to complete the XI. If this pool of talent is divided into 8 teams with 4 *8 (32) foreign players thrown in, what you get is an attractive, even glamorous but more importantly sub-standard (relative to int’l cricket) cricket. So by design, there’s always a hit me bowler (sometimes a few of them) or a specialist batsman who bats at 7 or 8 in each team.
It’s true that IPL didn’t live up to its promise of identifying and developing young Indian players and help them make the transition to international cricket successfully and all that. But hang on, who made that promise? Lalit Modi. Why would anyone take anything that he says seriously is beyond me. IPL is a domestic tournament with a few foreign players participating as well, just like the English county system. Has England produced world beaters in Test Cricket? No. Blaming the IPL for being a tournament which is unable to produce quality players for India at the int’l level is convenient but utterly illogical (Though IPL has a lot to be blamed for, otherwise). Can you expect a Bangladeshi Premier League with millions of dollars of investment from private enterprises to turn Bangladesh into world beaters? As a country, this is all the talent we have in supply. IPL can’t create test tube cricketers, no?
Having said all this, we do need to ask serious questions about the way the team is shaping up - even if India had made it to the SF by beating Srilanka by 20 odd runs and then gone onto the win the title. The number of promising fast bowlers who have lost their way after making a mark early in their career, is alarming. And that’s primarily why we haven’t been able to defend even high scores comfortably, both in T-20s and ODIs. Why was Piyush Chawla picked ahead of Pragyan Ojha and Amit Mishra (this may not have made any difference to our fortunes in the world T-20, but an awful selection nevertheless, anything but meritorious)? Why do we keep packing in 7 batsmen for a 20 over game? And what are we going to do to enable the young and the not so young batsmen to handle the short balls better? Just what exactly is Ravindra Jadeja’s role in the team? How long will Harbhajan continue to be our strike bowler without being consistently penetrative?
But there are no instant ready-made answers available. It’s a complex system. Not a video game, where you click a button and we start playing the bouncing ball better or produce an assembly line of fast bowlers. We need a structural solution. Instead of focusing on IPL, getting into the bottom of what’s happening at the National Cricket Academy would be a good place to start.
*For those who think that Ravindra Jadeja made it to the Indian team primarily because of his performances in IPL (which is not a bad thing at all), let me remind you that one Mr.J.P. Yadav played for India in the pre-IPL days.
The story is not too different in IPL either. Rajasthan Royals won the first edition when they were least expected to. Next year, Deccan Chargers won the title after finishing last in the table, the previous year. This year, Mumbai looked good to take home the trophy, despite not being able to make it to the semi-finals in the last 2 years. Of course one can always point out CSK’s and Pakistan’s consistency in this format, but let’s not forget that a lot of things went in favour of Pakistan and CSK to make it to the SF of this year’s World T-20 and IPL respectively.
Does this mean, we can’t be critical of the team’s bad performance because of the inherent randomness prevalent in this format? Of course not. My only point is we shouldn’t go by the end results alone. For a problem with multiple causes, our media is guilty of navel gazing. They want to zero in on exactly those factors which resulted in our early exit. So conveniently they found the most easily bashable thing going around at the moment - it’s a free for all bashing - the IPL.
The media has built a nice story around IPL as if that’s the reason for our losses. How many of us want to be bluffed into this story that we were world beaters before and then the IPL beast came in and made us susceptible against short balls, made Dhoni a bad captain and fast tracked Ravindra Jadeja* into the playing XI? C’mon guys, outside of the Fab 3 and Sehwag (with his own methods), our batsmen have never taken a liking to the rising ball. Suresh Raina (who was a success in the World T-20) is the biggest culprit of them all. He’s spent close to 5 years in int’l cricket and can’t play good short bowling to save his life (that slog pull is not an improvement but a desperate measure). And what did the selectors do? Dropped him for the Champions Trophy in SA and brought in Rahul Dravid, only to induct him back for the next home series, giving Dravid the axe!
Another most debated point is about how Yusuf Pathan is only an IPL specialist and not fit for int’l cricket. What has IPL to do with it, if he’s not able to make the transition (Let’s not forget that he made his debut for India even before IPL came into existence). Ranadeb Bose was picking wickets at Hadlee’s rate in Ranji Trophy for a couple of years, but we all knew he would never be a great success at the int’l level, does that give us a right to blame the Ranji Trophy for it? I agree that we ought to, at a broader level, that the competitiveness of the Ranji Trophy is not great due to lack of adequate number of quality players and all that. But Ranji Trophy as a platform is doing what it can do best. What’s the point in denigrating it?
Similar is the case with IPL. Murali Vijay’s brilliant batting in IPL raised our expectations, but that’s what we expected, right? For god’s sake let’s admit that there is a world of difference between the quality of Cricket in IPL and int’l cricket. The other day - in “Yorker” (Yahoo’s Cricket Chat show) - I had to select what according to me would constitute the ideal T-20 team for India. After 8 names, I was struggling to fill up the team, I didn’t want Nehra in my team but had no other alternative, even worse had to go with Sreesanth to complete the XI. If this pool of talent is divided into 8 teams with 4 *8 (32) foreign players thrown in, what you get is an attractive, even glamorous but more importantly sub-standard (relative to int’l cricket) cricket. So by design, there’s always a hit me bowler (sometimes a few of them) or a specialist batsman who bats at 7 or 8 in each team.
It’s true that IPL didn’t live up to its promise of identifying and developing young Indian players and help them make the transition to international cricket successfully and all that. But hang on, who made that promise? Lalit Modi. Why would anyone take anything that he says seriously is beyond me. IPL is a domestic tournament with a few foreign players participating as well, just like the English county system. Has England produced world beaters in Test Cricket? No. Blaming the IPL for being a tournament which is unable to produce quality players for India at the int’l level is convenient but utterly illogical (Though IPL has a lot to be blamed for, otherwise). Can you expect a Bangladeshi Premier League with millions of dollars of investment from private enterprises to turn Bangladesh into world beaters? As a country, this is all the talent we have in supply. IPL can’t create test tube cricketers, no?
Having said all this, we do need to ask serious questions about the way the team is shaping up - even if India had made it to the SF by beating Srilanka by 20 odd runs and then gone onto the win the title. The number of promising fast bowlers who have lost their way after making a mark early in their career, is alarming. And that’s primarily why we haven’t been able to defend even high scores comfortably, both in T-20s and ODIs. Why was Piyush Chawla picked ahead of Pragyan Ojha and Amit Mishra (this may not have made any difference to our fortunes in the world T-20, but an awful selection nevertheless, anything but meritorious)? Why do we keep packing in 7 batsmen for a 20 over game? And what are we going to do to enable the young and the not so young batsmen to handle the short balls better? Just what exactly is Ravindra Jadeja’s role in the team? How long will Harbhajan continue to be our strike bowler without being consistently penetrative?
But there are no instant ready-made answers available. It’s a complex system. Not a video game, where you click a button and we start playing the bouncing ball better or produce an assembly line of fast bowlers. We need a structural solution. Instead of focusing on IPL, getting into the bottom of what’s happening at the National Cricket Academy would be a good place to start.
*For those who think that Ravindra Jadeja made it to the Indian team primarily because of his performances in IPL (which is not a bad thing at all), let me remind you that one Mr.J.P. Yadav played for India in the pre-IPL days.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Where did the facts go?
Sriram Dayanand had written a very fine piece titled "Where did the opinion go" in Cricinfo recently. In his beautiful words, he raised many a question that every Indian cricket follower would have in his mind:
"Live commentary, a well-established source for opinion and analysis, was scrubbed clean too. Erstwhile opinionated voices were now contracted by ratings- and revenue-obsessed cricket boards, and matches were accompanied by the voices of cheerleaders. Too wary of saying anything substantial, they concentrated on honing their clichés and giggling away with their co-hosts. Even the once edgy and opinionated-by-nature Sunil Gavaskar had begun to sound like a chirpy choirboy as the decade ended."
But as much as I find the article to be persuasive, I can't completely sympathize with Sriram, as he seems to be concerned about a higher order problem. I am bitten by a more fundamental bug. The fact that the commentary scene has been so poor for the Indian viewer for so long, that I have even stopped expecting anything better. But now, even my relatively low expectations are in danger of being denied its due. Stereotype - fine, Cheerleaders in disguise - ok, I don't have a choice but to live with it. But facts?
I have noticed that a few times in this IPL, where commentators were guilty of creating a misalignment between my different senses. What I see and what I hear of what I see are at loggerheads. For instance, in today's match between Chennai vs Punjab, Irfan Pathan tried to hit Balaji out of the ground with an agricultural heave, played down the wrong line and was bowled. That's when the legend of Ravi Shastri was in full flow - "Through his defence... Sound of timber" he screamed. What? Through his defence? in which game is that called defence? sound of timber? the bails were just about dislodged man, not like Michael Holding uprooted the stumps which landed near the wicket-keeper or something. Calling a spade a spade is no crime.
There was a similar piece of commentary from Ravi Shastri again, in the CSK vs Deccan match. Justin Kemp danced down the wicket and lofted Pragyan Ojha over long off for a six. Next ball Kemp comes down again, Ojha pulls back the length a bit and bowls it a little flatter and Kemp is deceived by the length and gets stumped. Ravi in his eloquent style said something to the tune of "that was brave bowling by Ojha especially after being hit for a six of the previous ball". Oh really? What's brave about bowling it flat & short if you were hammered for a six of the previous flighted delivery. Isn't that the natural reaction? If you had just heard the commentary by Ravi and not seen the video, you would have thought that Ojha bravely tossed another one up and deceived Kemp in flight. At the same time, I am sure that if Kemp had stayed back for the same ball and cut it for a four, the same Ravi would have said "Ojha over compensates for the previous delivery and Kemp makes full use of it". He's just a template of a commentator, a hard-coded template at that.
If Ravi is so good, would LS stay far behind? No. When Virat Kohli's run-out decision was referred to the third umpire in RCB's match against MI, the replays very clearly suggested that Kohli was short of the crease, when the bails were dislodged - as obvious as it can ever get. But LS said something like "it'll take a brave umpire to give that out". Despite repeated viewing of the replays, he continued to reiterate that there was an element of doubt. Doubt? If this is doubtful, I am glad you are a commentator and not an umpire - bring back Steve Bucknor I say, even if he is in his Sydney form, its fine.
These are just the top of the mind recalls. We are filled up with such masterful commentary almost through out the IPL. Scyld Berry wrote about the importance of Neville Cardus' writing and how he transformed cricket reporting completely in the "Turning Points" column in Cricinfo. In that he points out a controversial angle to Cardus' writing: " He had no television to say he was wrong. He could wander round the boundary at Old Trafford, or even not watch the game at all, and write in the evening that the ball had spun viciously all day and Makepeace had batted to perfection, without anyone contradicting him."
As debatable as that aspect of Cardus' writing was, the output was sure as hell enjoyable, even though you couldn't cross check the reality. But these commentators get away with output, which is neither enjoyable nor accurate, though we get to watch the match live and cross check. And guess what,despite such a pathetic performance, their job is as secure as the Great Wall of China - so much for a market oriented league! Is there any hope? IPL has made me a Cricket nihilist. Sriram, you are in queue. Let my lower order need get satiated first.
"Live commentary, a well-established source for opinion and analysis, was scrubbed clean too. Erstwhile opinionated voices were now contracted by ratings- and revenue-obsessed cricket boards, and matches were accompanied by the voices of cheerleaders. Too wary of saying anything substantial, they concentrated on honing their clichés and giggling away with their co-hosts. Even the once edgy and opinionated-by-nature Sunil Gavaskar had begun to sound like a chirpy choirboy as the decade ended."
But as much as I find the article to be persuasive, I can't completely sympathize with Sriram, as he seems to be concerned about a higher order problem. I am bitten by a more fundamental bug. The fact that the commentary scene has been so poor for the Indian viewer for so long, that I have even stopped expecting anything better. But now, even my relatively low expectations are in danger of being denied its due. Stereotype - fine, Cheerleaders in disguise - ok, I don't have a choice but to live with it. But facts?
I have noticed that a few times in this IPL, where commentators were guilty of creating a misalignment between my different senses. What I see and what I hear of what I see are at loggerheads. For instance, in today's match between Chennai vs Punjab, Irfan Pathan tried to hit Balaji out of the ground with an agricultural heave, played down the wrong line and was bowled. That's when the legend of Ravi Shastri was in full flow - "Through his defence... Sound of timber" he screamed. What? Through his defence? in which game is that called defence? sound of timber? the bails were just about dislodged man, not like Michael Holding uprooted the stumps which landed near the wicket-keeper or something. Calling a spade a spade is no crime.
There was a similar piece of commentary from Ravi Shastri again, in the CSK vs Deccan match. Justin Kemp danced down the wicket and lofted Pragyan Ojha over long off for a six. Next ball Kemp comes down again, Ojha pulls back the length a bit and bowls it a little flatter and Kemp is deceived by the length and gets stumped. Ravi in his eloquent style said something to the tune of "that was brave bowling by Ojha especially after being hit for a six of the previous ball". Oh really? What's brave about bowling it flat & short if you were hammered for a six of the previous flighted delivery. Isn't that the natural reaction? If you had just heard the commentary by Ravi and not seen the video, you would have thought that Ojha bravely tossed another one up and deceived Kemp in flight. At the same time, I am sure that if Kemp had stayed back for the same ball and cut it for a four, the same Ravi would have said "Ojha over compensates for the previous delivery and Kemp makes full use of it". He's just a template of a commentator, a hard-coded template at that.
If Ravi is so good, would LS stay far behind? No. When Virat Kohli's run-out decision was referred to the third umpire in RCB's match against MI, the replays very clearly suggested that Kohli was short of the crease, when the bails were dislodged - as obvious as it can ever get. But LS said something like "it'll take a brave umpire to give that out". Despite repeated viewing of the replays, he continued to reiterate that there was an element of doubt. Doubt? If this is doubtful, I am glad you are a commentator and not an umpire - bring back Steve Bucknor I say, even if he is in his Sydney form, its fine.
These are just the top of the mind recalls. We are filled up with such masterful commentary almost through out the IPL. Scyld Berry wrote about the importance of Neville Cardus' writing and how he transformed cricket reporting completely in the "Turning Points" column in Cricinfo. In that he points out a controversial angle to Cardus' writing: " He had no television to say he was wrong. He could wander round the boundary at Old Trafford, or even not watch the game at all, and write in the evening that the ball had spun viciously all day and Makepeace had batted to perfection, without anyone contradicting him."
As debatable as that aspect of Cardus' writing was, the output was sure as hell enjoyable, even though you couldn't cross check the reality. But these commentators get away with output, which is neither enjoyable nor accurate, though we get to watch the match live and cross check. And guess what,despite such a pathetic performance, their job is as secure as the Great Wall of China - so much for a market oriented league! Is there any hope? IPL has made me a Cricket nihilist. Sriram, you are in queue. Let my lower order need get satiated first.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The IPL bandwagon is back
The IPL is back with all its Jazz and Razzmatazz in tact. So, IPL inaugurated its third edition, with a noble ambition of spreading the “go green” message, with a few rounds of fireworks – wow! I am glad that I was at office working late on a Friday evening so that I didn’t watch Lalit Modi’s speech in the opening ceremony even out of curiosity or for comic relief.
There’s so much to love about IPL but it’s just as easy to detest it too. If Tendulkar vs Warne is mouth-watering, Yousuf Pathan clearing the short boundary by a whisker (which would have otherwise been a wicket) is puke-worthy. What’s the point of bringing in the boundaries when every possible thing on earth is heavily stacked in favour of the batsmen already? This is worse than reservation. I remember watching the CSK vs MI match in the first edition of IPL at Chepauk. Suresh Raina hit 3 sixes, all of which would have been dismissals, if the boundaries were not brought in by 10 yards. I didn’t watch another match in the stadium. At least on TV, you only notice it when the ball goes to the boundary, but in the stadium it keeps bothering you throughout.
Having said that, I must also admit that there was some high quality cricket on display in the last 2 editions of IPL, which the last 20 ODI series that India has played put together cannot match. So with all its contradictions still in tact (and so is my ambivalence about it), the third edition is off to a fabulous start. It was heart warming to see hardly any usage of DLF maximums or Citi moment of success so far. Shastri though shamelessly plugged in “Karbon Kamaal” catch once but the crass commercialization has come down considerably (I spoke too early on this, as mentioned in the comment). Oh yeah, that ad in between the balls (feed from the stadium screen to TV one) is still too crass, but not sure if we should blame Set max or IPL for that. Will discuss the matches in separate posts.
I wanted to do a profile and analysis of each team in detail but March is just such a terrible month for such indulgence, with year end pressure piling up. Anyway, will do twitter style assessment as an alternative:
Delhi Daredevils: They look red hot favorites on paper. Gambhir, Sehwag, Warner, Dilshan and AB is a top order to die for, leave alone the final combination for the XI. With Nannes, Vettori (though not available till end of March), Mishra, Sangwan, Parnell – there’s enough fire power and variety in the bowling too. Rajat Bhatia & Yo Mahesh fulfill their roles reasonably well and Karthik is as good a T-20 Wicket-keeping batsman as you’ll get in the country outside of Dhoni. But let’s not forget that they were the hot favourites last time around too and one Gilly whirlwind put the trophy beyond their reach. That’s the nature of this T-20 beast – very little margin for error and time to recover.
Chennai Super Kings: Not far behind in paper strength is Chennai. Hayden, Vijay, Raina, Dhoni, Morkel, Hussey, Kemp and Badri (any combination of these batsmen) is a batting line which can chase down any score. Let’s not underestimate Justin Kemp. He was on his way to being the next Zulu (well, as close as it can get) till he lost his way. If he strikes form here, he’ll be unstoppable. Hemang Badani is a welcome addition to the squad this time. In my opinion he should be played ahead of Parthiv Patel. Bowling a is bit of concern for Dhoni. Oram is not available. Murali is not the best bowler in this format and also occupies that crucial foreign player slot. Ntini is too one dimensional. Tyagi looks good, Goni blows hot and cold, Balaji can hold his own in this format with his many varieties of slower of balls, but Dhoni may have to play Ashwin or Jakati ahead of Murali to get the balance right.
Bangalore Royal Challengers: This is the most weird set of players in one team. Dravid, Kumble, Steyn, KP, Kallis, Boucher – most if not all of these will figure in the best test team of the last decade. Then you have Ross Taylor, Robin Uttappa, Roelof Van der Merwe, Cameron White – all take to T-20 cricket like fish to water. In Manish Pandey and Virat Kohli, they also boast of the 2 young batting sensations in the country. What more, they also have 2 of the most promising fast bowlers in the domestic circuit – Abhinmanyu Mithun and Bhuvneshwar Kumar (though I don’t see these two playing much part). And Eion Morgan, for an Englishman, can be mighty effective in this format. All in all, B’lore has got players for all seasons, reasons and conditions. If they don’t make it to the semi-finals at least, they have only themselves to blame.
Mumbai Indians: It’s a well balanced side. Zaheer, Malinga, Bravo and Fernando is a fabulous bowling attack in T-20. I think Malinga is easily one of the best bowlers in this format of the game. Harbhajan is at his best in T -20 too. Ryan Mclaren and Dhawal Kulkarni are adequate back-ups and Jayasuriya can bowl some tight overs with his left arm-spin too. Sachin and Jaya opening with Duminy, Pollard, Bravo, Rayudu, Abhishek Nayar and Shikhar Dhawan to choose the middle order from, is quite a good batting line up. They also have a lot of relatively lesser known players in Aditya Tare, Saurabh Tiwary Ishan Malhotra, Ali Murtaza and Chandan Madan – Lets see how they perform. But the key for MI is the availability of Bravo and Pollard – till they join the team, the batting looks a little thin. If Pollard and Bravo play majority of the matches, my money is on MI making it to the semi-finals at least.
Deccan Chargers: By bidding for Kemar Roach successfully, Deccan tried to strengthen its weak link. It had a wafer thin bowling line-up in the first edition, which performed much better in the second in SA. Gilly, Gibbs, Symonds and Rohit Sharma is a dream of a top-order. It’ll be interesting to see how Mitchell Marsh fares in IPL. Can he take to the grand stage as easily as his brother did a couple of year back? But the problem for Deccan is that outside of Pragyan Ojha and RP Singh, they don’t have good domestic bowlers. And apart from Rohit Sharma they don’t have a great domestic batsman either – Venugopal Rao is just about adequate. For them to have a strong batting line up they have to necessarily play Gilly, Symonds and Gibbs which means they’ll have to choose either Vaas or Roach and not play both. Their bowling is way too weak for them to sustain the length of such a demanding and competitive tournament. How they did last year is a puzzle beyond me!
Kings XI Punjab: A line up of Yuvraj, Sanga, Mahela and Bopara suggests that the batting is in safe hands. But 3 of those 4 are foreign players, so balance goes for a toss. And Yuvraj, for some reason is not able to produce his usual T-20 form in IPL so far. They have further batting strength in the reserves in the form of Adrian Barath and James Hopes – but again they are foreign players. Kaif has been added to the squad but not sure if he can set the world on fire in this format. Outside of Yuvraj and Kaif, the next best domestic batsman in the team is Karan Goel – you know, that is not a comforting thought. Brett Lee, Yousuf Abdulla would be the first choice of bowlers – but for both of them to be picked, Sanga will be constrained to pick only 2 foreign batsmen. Sreesanth blows hot and cold and no different is Piyush Chawla. So on their day, Kings XI might be able to beat any team but to last the length of the tournament, Yuvraj has to be in the form of his life and then some more fortune to go with it.
Kolkata Knight Riders: This time KKR has started off the campaign on a quiet note. No multiple captains, no John Buchanan and hence more peace. They look a little more balanced this time. Shane Bond is such crucial addition to the team. He is that rare match winner with the ball even in this format. Like it is with Kings XI, the problem for KKR is the quality of domestic batsmen in the team. Outside of Ganguly (who’s also not really fired in the IPL much) there is nothing much to boast of. Pujara is one of the most promising batsmen in the country but not ideally suited for T-20, but I hope he does well. Manoj Tiwary's been promising for too long without delivering much. Rohan Gavaskar and Laxmi Ratan Shukla are just about on par. Gayle, McCullum are super stars in T-20, Owais Shah will be very effective too but not all of them can play. With Angelo Matthews putting his all round ability on the table, it will be quite a headache for Dada once Shane Bond joins in too. Only if Shane Bond and Chris Gayle have the tournament of their lives, can KKR hope to have a crack at the title.
Rajasthan Royals: They have abundant bowling riches to choose from – Shaun Tait, Morne Morkel, Munaf Patel, Shane Warne and even Siddharth Trivedi. But it’s the batting which is the problem for RR. Like India of the 1990’s they are way too reliant on man – Yousuf Pathan. Outside of Graeme Smith and Pathan, there are no match-winners with the bat. Maybe Damien Martyn will be able to reproduce some of his old magic. But that’s too much to hope for. With such a thin batting line up, I don’t see them making it to the semi-finals unless Yousuf Pathan plays like Sachin did for India in 1990’s.
In short, my bet for the semi-final spots - Delhi, Chennai, B'lore and Mumbai. And my bet for the title - Delhi or Chennai. Of course the usual disclaimers of T-20 being unpredictable and that the teams are so evenly matched in IPL etc applies!
There’s so much to love about IPL but it’s just as easy to detest it too. If Tendulkar vs Warne is mouth-watering, Yousuf Pathan clearing the short boundary by a whisker (which would have otherwise been a wicket) is puke-worthy. What’s the point of bringing in the boundaries when every possible thing on earth is heavily stacked in favour of the batsmen already? This is worse than reservation. I remember watching the CSK vs MI match in the first edition of IPL at Chepauk. Suresh Raina hit 3 sixes, all of which would have been dismissals, if the boundaries were not brought in by 10 yards. I didn’t watch another match in the stadium. At least on TV, you only notice it when the ball goes to the boundary, but in the stadium it keeps bothering you throughout.
Having said that, I must also admit that there was some high quality cricket on display in the last 2 editions of IPL, which the last 20 ODI series that India has played put together cannot match. So with all its contradictions still in tact (and so is my ambivalence about it), the third edition is off to a fabulous start. It was heart warming to see hardly any usage of DLF maximums or Citi moment of success so far. Shastri though shamelessly plugged in “Karbon Kamaal” catch once but the crass commercialization has come down considerably (I spoke too early on this, as mentioned in the comment). Oh yeah, that ad in between the balls (feed from the stadium screen to TV one) is still too crass, but not sure if we should blame Set max or IPL for that. Will discuss the matches in separate posts.
I wanted to do a profile and analysis of each team in detail but March is just such a terrible month for such indulgence, with year end pressure piling up. Anyway, will do twitter style assessment as an alternative:
Delhi Daredevils: They look red hot favorites on paper. Gambhir, Sehwag, Warner, Dilshan and AB is a top order to die for, leave alone the final combination for the XI. With Nannes, Vettori (though not available till end of March), Mishra, Sangwan, Parnell – there’s enough fire power and variety in the bowling too. Rajat Bhatia & Yo Mahesh fulfill their roles reasonably well and Karthik is as good a T-20 Wicket-keeping batsman as you’ll get in the country outside of Dhoni. But let’s not forget that they were the hot favourites last time around too and one Gilly whirlwind put the trophy beyond their reach. That’s the nature of this T-20 beast – very little margin for error and time to recover.
Chennai Super Kings: Not far behind in paper strength is Chennai. Hayden, Vijay, Raina, Dhoni, Morkel, Hussey, Kemp and Badri (any combination of these batsmen) is a batting line which can chase down any score. Let’s not underestimate Justin Kemp. He was on his way to being the next Zulu (well, as close as it can get) till he lost his way. If he strikes form here, he’ll be unstoppable. Hemang Badani is a welcome addition to the squad this time. In my opinion he should be played ahead of Parthiv Patel. Bowling a is bit of concern for Dhoni. Oram is not available. Murali is not the best bowler in this format and also occupies that crucial foreign player slot. Ntini is too one dimensional. Tyagi looks good, Goni blows hot and cold, Balaji can hold his own in this format with his many varieties of slower of balls, but Dhoni may have to play Ashwin or Jakati ahead of Murali to get the balance right.
Bangalore Royal Challengers: This is the most weird set of players in one team. Dravid, Kumble, Steyn, KP, Kallis, Boucher – most if not all of these will figure in the best test team of the last decade. Then you have Ross Taylor, Robin Uttappa, Roelof Van der Merwe, Cameron White – all take to T-20 cricket like fish to water. In Manish Pandey and Virat Kohli, they also boast of the 2 young batting sensations in the country. What more, they also have 2 of the most promising fast bowlers in the domestic circuit – Abhinmanyu Mithun and Bhuvneshwar Kumar (though I don’t see these two playing much part). And Eion Morgan, for an Englishman, can be mighty effective in this format. All in all, B’lore has got players for all seasons, reasons and conditions. If they don’t make it to the semi-finals at least, they have only themselves to blame.
Mumbai Indians: It’s a well balanced side. Zaheer, Malinga, Bravo and Fernando is a fabulous bowling attack in T-20. I think Malinga is easily one of the best bowlers in this format of the game. Harbhajan is at his best in T -20 too. Ryan Mclaren and Dhawal Kulkarni are adequate back-ups and Jayasuriya can bowl some tight overs with his left arm-spin too. Sachin and Jaya opening with Duminy, Pollard, Bravo, Rayudu, Abhishek Nayar and Shikhar Dhawan to choose the middle order from, is quite a good batting line up. They also have a lot of relatively lesser known players in Aditya Tare, Saurabh Tiwary Ishan Malhotra, Ali Murtaza and Chandan Madan – Lets see how they perform. But the key for MI is the availability of Bravo and Pollard – till they join the team, the batting looks a little thin. If Pollard and Bravo play majority of the matches, my money is on MI making it to the semi-finals at least.
Deccan Chargers: By bidding for Kemar Roach successfully, Deccan tried to strengthen its weak link. It had a wafer thin bowling line-up in the first edition, which performed much better in the second in SA. Gilly, Gibbs, Symonds and Rohit Sharma is a dream of a top-order. It’ll be interesting to see how Mitchell Marsh fares in IPL. Can he take to the grand stage as easily as his brother did a couple of year back? But the problem for Deccan is that outside of Pragyan Ojha and RP Singh, they don’t have good domestic bowlers. And apart from Rohit Sharma they don’t have a great domestic batsman either – Venugopal Rao is just about adequate. For them to have a strong batting line up they have to necessarily play Gilly, Symonds and Gibbs which means they’ll have to choose either Vaas or Roach and not play both. Their bowling is way too weak for them to sustain the length of such a demanding and competitive tournament. How they did last year is a puzzle beyond me!
Kings XI Punjab: A line up of Yuvraj, Sanga, Mahela and Bopara suggests that the batting is in safe hands. But 3 of those 4 are foreign players, so balance goes for a toss. And Yuvraj, for some reason is not able to produce his usual T-20 form in IPL so far. They have further batting strength in the reserves in the form of Adrian Barath and James Hopes – but again they are foreign players. Kaif has been added to the squad but not sure if he can set the world on fire in this format. Outside of Yuvraj and Kaif, the next best domestic batsman in the team is Karan Goel – you know, that is not a comforting thought. Brett Lee, Yousuf Abdulla would be the first choice of bowlers – but for both of them to be picked, Sanga will be constrained to pick only 2 foreign batsmen. Sreesanth blows hot and cold and no different is Piyush Chawla. So on their day, Kings XI might be able to beat any team but to last the length of the tournament, Yuvraj has to be in the form of his life and then some more fortune to go with it.
Kolkata Knight Riders: This time KKR has started off the campaign on a quiet note. No multiple captains, no John Buchanan and hence more peace. They look a little more balanced this time. Shane Bond is such crucial addition to the team. He is that rare match winner with the ball even in this format. Like it is with Kings XI, the problem for KKR is the quality of domestic batsmen in the team. Outside of Ganguly (who’s also not really fired in the IPL much) there is nothing much to boast of. Pujara is one of the most promising batsmen in the country but not ideally suited for T-20, but I hope he does well. Manoj Tiwary's been promising for too long without delivering much. Rohan Gavaskar and Laxmi Ratan Shukla are just about on par. Gayle, McCullum are super stars in T-20, Owais Shah will be very effective too but not all of them can play. With Angelo Matthews putting his all round ability on the table, it will be quite a headache for Dada once Shane Bond joins in too. Only if Shane Bond and Chris Gayle have the tournament of their lives, can KKR hope to have a crack at the title.
Rajasthan Royals: They have abundant bowling riches to choose from – Shaun Tait, Morne Morkel, Munaf Patel, Shane Warne and even Siddharth Trivedi. But it’s the batting which is the problem for RR. Like India of the 1990’s they are way too reliant on man – Yousuf Pathan. Outside of Graeme Smith and Pathan, there are no match-winners with the bat. Maybe Damien Martyn will be able to reproduce some of his old magic. But that’s too much to hope for. With such a thin batting line up, I don’t see them making it to the semi-finals unless Yousuf Pathan plays like Sachin did for India in 1990’s.
In short, my bet for the semi-final spots - Delhi, Chennai, B'lore and Mumbai. And my bet for the title - Delhi or Chennai. Of course the usual disclaimers of T-20 being unpredictable and that the teams are so evenly matched in IPL etc applies!
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