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.