Spin doctors, fast and furious!

3 out of 3.

That's Deccan's win record so far, announcing themselves as genuine contenders as the team to beat along with Delhi. Mustering only 168/9 thanks to some ferocious death bowling from Malinga and Bravo, Deccan proved that they can defend chaseable totals with some fearsome pace of their own. Oh, did I forget Pragyan Ojha? With wickets of Tendulkar, Duminy, and Dhawan, one would be indeed blind to overlook his fine effort.

As it is with most teams having gained decent momentum while batting, Mumbai would feel mildly aggrieved that the strategic timeout came at the most inappropriate time for them. Tendulkar was shepherding Duminy like a Master and a consummate win looked on the cards. Post-break, Tendulkar added only one more run before getting out and the rest of Mumbai followed him pretty cheaply, with the exception of Harbhajan Singh. That said, Ojha was the only candidate for the MOM award, Having had the best of some acclaimed batters in this competition so far, it would be really interesting to see how he fares against Hayden, Sehwag, and Gayle, the most explosive openers in this edition.  

Sunday's matches are Bangalore vs Delhi and Punjab vs Rajasthan. The first clash would probably see Delhi take it, given Bangalore's poor run and Delhi's excellent win over Chennai. The second one will involve the Pathan brothers, both crucial to their captains. Yusuf gave another demonstration of how murderous he can be against spinners against Kolkata the other day while Irfan got his bowling boots on and managed to get 3 vital wickets in their win against Bangalore. An even contest is in the offing, as Rajasthan's top order is not firing that well while Punjab's bowling still looks a bit weak.

Some news about players now. Andrew Flintoff has returned home to undergo knee surgery, which would mean that he will be ruled out of the England-West Indies series. This news is bad for England, no doubt, but, in hindsight, they would feel relieved that this happened now and not just before the Aussies come visiting for the Ashes  in May. Also, Rahul Dravid is expected to return home on paternity leave (maybe, he has already), to be with his wife expecting their second child. And as the rest of England's squad are expected to report for the WI series next week, which would see KP leave them as well, Bangalore would miss 2 of their starting middle-order batters. More concern for Bangalore's think-tank. 

Kings indeed!

Trends are meant to be broken. This seemed to be Ravi Bopara's motto when he led Punjab to their first victory in IPL 2009. You don't have to whack boundaries to reach a competitive total, teams batting second can win and above all, pacing an innings will always pay rich dividends, even in T20. A richly deserved win, laced with enormous relief that rain didn't play a part (as Yuvraj alluded in the post-match presentation) and now they are on 2 points as well.

On the other side, worries mount for KP and Ray Jennings. Having demonstrated back-to-back failures in chasing totals, Bangalore have now failed to defend a total that was much higher than the one they scored in their opening encounter. To make matters worse, the captain himself flopped this time, and pressure will be applied by the owner on KP to deliver. To make matters even worse (if such a thing is possible), defending champions Rajasthan lost only 3 matches last year all through the tournament, which is the number of losses Bangalore has racked up so far. Clearly, a lot of work needs to be done to get into the winning mode. Not to mention that the next match Bangalore has is against Delhi, one of the frontrunners for this edition.

Saturday's double header sees high-flying Deccan take on Mumbai while Chennai and Kolkata will fight it out to get back to winning ways. Deccan have made a strong statement in this edition, their bowling has been first-class and the fielding, inspirational. And if Gilly continues to belt the ball like he did against Bangalore the other day, very few things could prevent them landing the title this year. Spectators were unfortunately deprived of a classic battle between Tendulkar and Warne, but, if all goes well, a mouth-watering contest could well be in the offing between Mumbai's marauding batting pair and the dangerous Edwards-RP Singh opening bowling combination.

Chennai will have blamed themselves for failing to cross the line in their encounter against Delhi yesterday and will be raring to go against Kolkata. As for McCullum and his boys, they would be really keen to put that demoralizing Super Over loss to Rajasthan behind and show a killer instinct henceforth. With Hayden and Gayle in rousing form, expect a fiery opening stand in either innings.

I also read an article in Cricinfo today, about how a curator at Kingsmead, Durban, was involved with ICL last year and prepared the pitch for today's match. I just hope that BCCI and ICC don't extend their antipathy to him. It would smack of unprecedented arrogance and unbelievable pomp.

Humdinger (or how I lost the battle but won the war)

Thursday was election day in Karnataka. Well, not in all constituencies, but in 17 of the maximum 28. I voted sometime around noon, after having returned home from a ceremony of a close family friend. A heavy lunch lulled me into a steady slumber, broken only by another invitation. This time, from a friend who wanted to go shopping for his bro's wedding, due next week. 

So, I proceeded to his house around 4:15 PM, by which time, the match between Delhi and Chennai was already underway. I was a bit stunned to discover Delhi's rampaging opening pair Sehwag and Gambhir had fallen cheaply, though, Dilshan and de Villiers were slowly and surely going about the repair job. AB unleashed the pyrotechnics to become the first centurion of IPL 2009 and in the process, made Freddie Flintoff look like a league bowler (4-0-50-0 is rather flat, even for a domestic player). While it may be worth gushing over his fine technique of masterly destruction (as per this article), I don't think it as a real revelation. For one, AB has been in fine form, starting from the time he scored that priceless 106 not out in Perth last December, helping South Africa to a stunning victory. Secondly, Dhoni's bowling selections seemed a bit erratic, preferring the quicker Flintoff when a recourse to a slower option would have been more sensible, given the effectiveness provided by spinners and slow medium-pacers in this edition. 

In any case, Chennai tore off the blocks in their reply and the match appeared to be heading towards them, with Hayden reeling one booming hit after another. After he fell for an uncharacteristic loose shot, I thought Delhi regrouped themselves exceedingly well and held their nerves in a very tight finish. Despite the early scare for their bowlers, Delhi will feel mighty proud of this performance, as their middle order was tested for the first time (and came out with flying colors) and they demonstrated enough steel behind the silk to prevail.

I didn't see the second match completely as I had to run for shopping with my friends. But, when I returned home close to midnight, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't over yet. Ganguly and Agarkar were batting, KKR had 5 to get in as many balls, and Ganguly had looked to sewn it in the bag when he took two of a jab towards short midwicket to leave KKR with an easy target of 2-in-2 deliveries. I was therefore taken aback when he tried to go for that wild hoick over covers only to edge behind, when common sense would have told to go for a quick tap-and-run to tie the match. And the drama only increased when KKR contrived to indeed tie the match, thus enforcing a result through the Super Over.

Now, as far as I could understand, this is how the result is decided through a Super Over:

1. Each team will nominate one bowler and three batsmen for the Super Over stage. Each team will have an inning lasting only one over. 
   
2. The team which batted second in the regulation time will bat first in the Super Over stage. 
   
3. The Super Over team is akin to a mini-knockout round, where the team batting first in this stage will try to score maximum possible runs in 6 legal deliveries and set a target for the team batting second. 
   
4. If the team batting first manages to get the team batting second within the target, then team batting first wins. If the team batting second overhauls the target, then the team batting second wins. 
   

Yusuf ensured that there would be no more hiccups to Rajasthan and smote Mendis to long-off, deep midwicket and backward square leg to bag the match for them. Truly, a fine comeback and yet another instance of the team batting second failing to win the match.

Despite all this, I don't quite understand the overbearing need to find a winner in the event of a tie. If I recall, some years ago, there was this rule that in the event of a tie in a proper ODI (lasting 50 overs), the team that lost fewer wickets in posting the total would be the winning team. This made good sense, as it not only showed up the relative batting strength of the winning team, but also the relative bowling strength as well. Why we can't implement this rule for T20, is beyond my comprehension.

And now, a short preview for Friday's match between Bangalore and Punjab. Both teams are clearly struggling, with Punjab yet to get off the mark, the only team in the competition with that "honor". Bangalore's batting problems are obvious, and as Punjab's bowling is limp with the absences of Sreesanth, Brett Lee and James Hopes, a possible batting powerhouse performance from Bangalore should not be taken too seriously. Punjab would look at batting first (despite having lost both their opening matches doing that) and look to set a strong total to put Bangalore's misfiring batters under pressure. Bangalore, on the other hand, would do well to heed their captain's advice: exploit the fielding restrictions more in the first 6 overs. 

Win the toss, win the match?

Considering Deccan Chargers comprehensive thrashing of KKR in their first match and Royal Challengers' rude awakening at the hands of Chennai SK, Wednesday's battle between these 2 chumps of IPL 2008 was eagerly awaited. And when Gilly won the toss and decided to bat, I thought, well, ok, let's see how RCB chase.

All that optimism went up in smoke as Chargers rocketed to 27/0 in 2 wayward overs of Praveen Kumar and Dale Steyn. I mean, it's understandable that you're bowling to one of the most lethal opening batting pairs in world cricket: Gilly and Gibbs. I could also accept the fact that the ball wasn't swinging as it does after lights come on. But, to give away 27 in just 2 overs? C'mon, are we really that bad?

DC motored along nicely and with some smoking hitting from Rohit Sharma (who annoyingly fails to convert his IPL form to ODI arena) ended up with 184/6. Reasonably achievable, I thought. Show some fireworks initially, get to around 45-50 at the 5 over mark and take it from there, which will set the stage for Rahul Dravid to play his natural game and with/without rain interruptions, win the match.

And what do RCB manage? A wicket off the first ball, with Ryder falling to one wicked in-swinger from Fidel Edwards. Despite taking 10 more runs from that over, the writing was on the wall: the ball was swinging wildly and with RP Singh in his characteristic tight element, KP and Uthappa were crawling when they should have been creaming. The runs dried up, the catches stayed to DC's fielders hands (Ravi Teja's off Uthappa was particularly brilliant) and though Dravid and Kohli threatened with their late heroics, the damage was too heavy to be undone.

So where do we go from here? 3 played, won 1 and lost 2. Not that bad, if you consider 5th position with a marginally improved net run-rate and the prospect of facing the Kings XI Punjab on Friday, who have lost 2 in 2 (albeit both in rain-affected matches). Certain things need to be looked at closely, however.

1. Batting order - This is plainly not working. The starts have been non-existent and the middle-order is left having too much to do. The temptation may be to push Dravid to open but that will worsen the balance even more. If KP believes he's the man for the job, then he needs to open the innings with Kallis (get more match practice batting), with Ryder at 3 and Uthappa at 4. Dravid at 5 and Kohli at 6 should remain where they are. And please send Ross Taylor home. He just doesn't look interested in this edition.

2. Bowling options - Praveen Kumar looks dangerous when conditions are good but is a liability when faced with potent opening batting combinations. The bigger disappointment has been Steyn. Maybe, the long summer of battles with Australia is taking a toll on him. Kumble was magnificent against the Royals but went for runs against both CSK and DC. Kallis the bowler is a pale shadow of his former self and Ryder seems to be the only safe bet in the bowling line up. Clearly, a challenge for KP and Ray Jennings to mull over. My 2 cents: open with Praveen and Steyn for one over each, rotate between Ryder, Kumble and KP himself, with periodic bursts from Kallis/Kohli. Keep the batsman guessing and above all, take the pace off the ball when bowling first.

3. Toss luck - Now, this is not in anybody's hands, but given the fact that the only match lasting 20 overs-a-side which has been won by the team batting second was the one between DC and KKR, winning the toss is (for now) is sharing a direct relationship with batting first and winning the match. Both of Kings XI's matches were hit by rain and devastating opening batting from Sehwag and Gayle, so it would make more sense to win the toss and chase if and only if there is a good possibility of rain affecting the match. Else, its the same old adage that works well in Test Cricket: win the toss, bat well and put the opposition under pressure by bowling well. Exactly what DC did today.

4. Winning habit - As the matches come thick and fast, momentum is critical to build confidence ahead of important games. These games could be those which can decide table positions in the matter of hours. Thus, it's important to make winning a habit, because, it makes you feel confident in situations which you have overcome before. Conversely, you're more likely to let pressure get you (despite these players having international experience) when you have succumbed to it in a previous game.

More to come on IPL. I take back my previous hatred of it :)