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Monday, May 30, 2011

Moving season for the IPL

Since its inception, the IPL has never been sold or bought in half-measures. Its approach has always been full-throttle, top-volume. Appropriately, then, an assessment of season four must avoid waffling around the half-empty or half-full. Is 2011 to be remembered for the fireworks on the final night at the Yellow Sea of Chepauk? Or the acreage of empty stands at the Wankhede three nights in a row, representative of the general spectator turnout of six weeks? The dazzle of Chris Gayle? Or the Shane Warne-Sanjay Dixit skirmish? Or even more, the dramatic drop in TV ratings from last season? Or should it be the clues sent out to the world by the BCCI and Indian players over next month's tour of the West Indies?
Regardless of what its own "stakeholders" choose as the flavour of their season - sagacity or smugness - 2011 will be regarded as the IPL's "Moving Season". If "moving day" in cricket and golf are about momentum swings and the emergence of contenders, IPL's Moving Season will dictate the future course of the event.
They can, of course, opt for the old "if it ain't broke...", and there's much about the IPL that ain't broke. It still remains cricket's golden goose, with generous salary packets for over 200 overseas and Indian players. The IPL's largest financial deals, starting with franchise ownerships and TV revenues, are tied in for another six years. It features the involvement of some of India's largest corporate houses, men and women with deep pockets and both a love of the limelight and a nose for profit. The IPL can still produce several moments of eye-catching cricket - individual blinders, crafty bowling plans, impossible catches, delicious UltraMotion replays of on-field action.
The IPL also spawned several copycat Twenty20 leagues in Indian state cricket (Karnataka, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Orissa, to name a few). Its effect is also being felt overseas: Sri Lanka Cricket will launch its own Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL) to take place this July-August, controlled entirely by its board. Australia's remodelled Big Bash League will feature an expansion of its field, from six to eight, adding two privately owned teams, one each in Sydney and Melbourne.
Yet 2011 will still be Moving Season because it also put under direct light the IPL's own flaws: that the existence of 10 teams has sucked out the talent pool to a level close to shallow. Even the trimmed number of games - 74, down from a gluttonous dream of 94 - are far too many. It has all led to too few close games, a certain distancing even by India's TV audience from its beloved "cricketainment", and most damningly, empty stands during the playoffs. Even Ravi Shastri found himself all hyped-out when, before the Mumbai-Bangalore qualifier game, he asked one of the captains at the toss, "Your last game was a good, tight one against ... whom did you beat?"
It's not his fault. So much had happened during the 2011 IPL: helicopters landed in Osama Bin Laden's backyard, Indian parliamentarians and corporate honchos went to prison, and most European nations decided it was time their football seasons actually ended.
What happened inside the IPL, though, as Sanjay Manjrekar wrote on Sunday, was the arrival of Indian cricket's saturation point. We now know that, after a season of 11 Tests and 25 ODIs, including a euphoric World Cup, even the Indian cricket fan's seemingly inexhaustible appetite cannot swallow 74 Twenty20 matches. Reducing the number of matches or altering the format will infuriate franchises, who were promised 14 games each every season. To not do so, though, is to risk inviting a tipping point. The IPL's governors may well believe that the World Cup victory is the excuse for the 2011 IPL's flat line, but the businessmen are bound to start getting tetchy anyway. This fourth season of the IPL was to be the year the original eight teams had always believed they would at last begin making profits.
Whatever the post-season numbers indicate for the IPL's investors, the full impact of this season on Indian cricket itself will also begin to reveal itself within a month's time, at the ICC's annual conference in Hong Kong. The BCCI will formally show its hand in the post-IPL era at this meeting, because it is where the next round of the Future Tours Programme (FTP) will be decided.
 


 
Whatever the post-season numbers indicate for the IPL's investors, the full impact of this season on Indian cricket itself will also begin to reveal itself within a month's time, at the ICC's annual conference in Hong Kong
 




In an ideal world, the BCCI could draw up the IPL calendar according to the Indian team's itinerary. It could formulate a carefully balanced schedule, keeping in mind important international events and physical demands on the players. In the real world, though, already the BCCI has demonstrated that it is the IPL's calendar around which the Indian team will play. So the first tour of the new world champions and the world's No. 1 Test team sees the side go in without the majority of their ODI first XI, most of whom are either injured or fatigued. Not so much by the World Cup but surely by what followed it. The Test team will compete without Sachin Tendulkar.
Moving Season will also mark the direction the rest of world cricket must take with regard to the IPL. Already there is unrest between the West Indian board and its IPL-magnet players, which has enraged the team's fans. Ravi Bopara and Eoin Morgan have indicated that England's players actually have the power to keep all their options open. If English county circuit was once considered the world's best first-class cricket school, the IPL has now become the game's most lucrative freelance assignment. To players from the smaller cricketing nations, like the West Indies, Sri Lanka and New Zealand, the IPL has made club v country nothing but a debating society argument. Lasith Malinga has answered many questions. Yet the ten-team 2011 IPL has proved that the tournament needs its overseas players as much as those players believe they need IPL contracts.
The IPL, though, is not all that concerned about that whole "future of cricket" argument. It was built around bling and bottomline. Part of that bling comes from Bollywood stars, the other from its packed stands and manic fans. By season three, escalating ticket sales had turned grounds into heaving party venues, adding to returns off television, the oxygen tent of the event. All that bellowing on TV is actually the medium sending out a message: See! Movie stars! Cricket stars! Thousands! All packed in! Fours! Sixes! Dancing! This is where it's at! Keep watching! It's like being there!
Shah Rukh Khan waving at Eden Gardens' empty stands doesn't send out that message. Nor does a live band or cheerleaders in a studio do that. Doubling the price of tickets, as was done for the better part at the Wankhede Stadium during playoffs, most certainly won't.Saurabh Tiwary loses his bat, Chennai v Bangalore, IPL 2011, Final, Chennai, May 28, 2011
Another kind of message was sent to fans at that ground on playoffs nights: that a Rs 4000 ticket in the North Stand comes with a free constant drizzle of mud, dirt and cement pebbles from the tier. One spectator was clunked on the head with large, heavy chunks of cement not once but twice. In the US, he could have sued the stadium, the event, the franchise. In India, he will vote with his feet and not show up again.
The IPL will have to reinvent its vibrancy in season five and start with aiming to fill the stands up again. Franchise loyalty is still in its infancy. Two new teams have just got going, not very successfully. Spectator loyalty is what the fifth season of the IPL will have to generate afresh, with no half-measures. If the Indian spectator finally gets his due through the IPL, then enduring Navjot Sidhu on TV for 51 days would be worth it.

Shahid Afridi 'quits' international cricket

Shahid Afridi, Pakistan's recently axed one-day captain, has announced his "conditional" retirement from the international game, as a mark of protest against the way he has been "humiliated" by the PCB. However, Afridi said he was ready to reverse his decision if and when a new board came into power.Shahid Afridi brought West Indies' innings to a close by bowling Ravi Rampaul, West Indies v Pakistan, 1st quarter-final, World Cup 2011, March 23, 2011
"There is nothing bigger than a man's respect, and the way the board has treated me, there is a limit to everything," Afridi was quoted as saying by Geo TV in Pakistan and by the Jang newspaper. "I will not play under this board. If a different board comes in, I will definitely return but I cannot play under this board. When you have been humiliated like this, by dishonourable people, what is the point in playing on?
"The way I've been treated ... the future doesn't look too good. I can't play under a board that doesn't respect its players. Because of this, under protest, this is a conditional retirement.
"I wasn't told anything when I was made captain, I wasn't given a tenure, I wasn't told what my squad would be, nothing. I took a broken team along with me. Maybe I have become a thorn in their throats. Its better that I step aside for now as I have respect for myself."
The retirement follows on the heels of Afridi's sacking as ODI captain despite Pakistan's 3-2 success against West Indies. Though the board did not give official reasons for the removal, it was believed to be the result of growing differences Afridi had with coach Waqar Younis, in particular over matters of selection.
"We had very solid reasons to remove Afridi and I will reveal them when the time is right," PCB chairman Ijaz Butt had said. "We haven't taken this action without any reasons."
On his return from the Caribbean, Afridi referred to the situation with Waqar, saying, "Although the differences in team management are not such which could not be solved, I feel everyone should do his job and need not interfere in other's work". That led to the board issuing him a showcause notice to explain his remarks, and presumably formed part of the reasons for his removal. Subsequently Afridi decided to pull outof the two ODIs against Ireland; speculation was that he was unhappy over his ouster, though he said he had decided to miss the series due to his father's ill-health. Pakistan have since gone on to win that series 2-0, though they were stretched in the second match.
Afridi is not new to retirement. He first announced a temporary sabbatical from Test cricket in April 2006, in a bid to concentrate only on ODIs in the lead-up to the 2007 World Cup. But he then said that he would reconsider his 'retirement' after the World Cup. He later returned to the side, and even led Pakistan's Test side at the start of their tumultuous tour of England last summer. He, however, once again retired from the longest format, as soon as Pakistan lost the first Test against Australia at Lord's. Afridi was one of the culprits in Pakistan's spineless second-innings effort, holing out against part-timer Marcus North who ran through the line-up.
"With my temperament I can't play Test cricket," Afridi said then. "I wasn't interested in playing Test cricket but the board asked me to go and take a look as they didn't have a choice. But I wasn't really enjoying Test cricket but I tried. I wasn't good enough. A captain should lead by example which I did not."
Afridi was replaced by the then vice-captain Salman Butt, who held the reins until he was ousted following the spot-fixing scandal, at which stage Misbah took charge of the Test side. Afridi remained at the helm in the shorter versions, and led from the front as Pakistan outperformed in the lead-up to, and during, the 2011 World Cup.
Afridi is currently in England and is set to play for Hampshire in the Friends Provident t20. He will also be available for the inaugural edition of the Sri Lankan Premier League, and will participate in domestic cricket in Pakistan.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Raina stuns Bangalore to power Chennai into final The Bulletin by Sriram Veera


How did Chennai win this? How did Bangalore lose this? Chennai always seemed to be lagging behind but surged like a tidal wave towards the end, with the odd run-filled over now and then, to storm into their third IPL final in four seasons. At the forefront was the feisty Suresh Raina, who pulled out the big shots through the latter half of the chase to set up an improbable win. The defeat makes Bangalore's path to the final - and beyond - tougher. They will have to win the second Qualifier on Saturday, if they are to meet Chennai in the final at the MA Chidambaram stadium, where the hosts have been unbeaten all season.Suresh Raina cross-bats a big hit, Bangalore v Chennai, 1st qualifier, IPL 2011, Mumbai, May 24, 2011
Bangalore will look back and rue at a few poor overs. There were full tosses and length deliveries galore and Chennai capitalised in some style. Virat Kohli bowled a slew of full tosses in the ninth over to leak 16 runs, and Abhimanyu Mithun kept bowling length deliveries in the 13th over, bleeding 23 runs. It included a fabulously carved six over the covers as Raina went down on a bent knee, to follow his muscled heave over long-off. Even then, the equation - 82 from 42 balls - seemed a tough proposition and it got tighter when it came down to 58 from 24. Chris Gayle had led from front with a parsimonious spell that read 4-0-19-0 as he fired in the skidders and the occasional yorker to pin down Chennai.
But Raina wasn't done yet, and he ramped it up style in the 17th over, from Zaheer Khan, who had been exemplary in his opening three-over spell. Raina's two sixes over midwicket, a thumping pull and a clubbed swing, were sandwiched by a bottom-hand powered six over wide long-on by MS Dhoni, who however fell in the same over. Zaheer went for 20 runs in that over and Chennai had well and truly seized the momentum.
More agony awaited Bangalore in the 19th over, bowled by S Aravind. Albie Morkel crashed a slower ball over long-on and clubbed a full toss over long-off before Raina killed another full toss over the midwicket boundary. That 21-run over left Chennai needing 12 off the final over by Daniel Vettori and Morkel dragged a four to wide long-on, before walloping the fourth ball over midwicket to win the contest.
Until those frenetic end overs, Bangalore were well on their way to becoming the first team to enter the final. The big question before the game was whether Bangalore would deflate like cheap party balloons if Gayle went out early. They answered that in an emphatic manner, as Kohli powered them to a competitive total.
Bangalore were in danger of slipping into free-fall after Gayle fell cheaply, trapped by R Aswhin, but Kohli and Luke Pomersbach ensured they stayed afloat. While Kohli batted with calculated aggression, Pomersbach counterattacked, taking 17 runs in the 15th over, off Dwayne Bravo. A murderous heave to wide long-on, a slash to third man and a flat six over midwicket were the highlights. Kohli, though, was the person who sculpted and shaped Bangalore's innings. Two shots in particular reflected the assurance in his knock. In the 13th over, he sashayed back to a back-of-length delivery from Raina to unfurl a peachy punch to the cover-point boundary. Then, off the final ball of the 16th over, he leaned forward to play a classy lofted whip over wide long-on Ashwin. He went on to produce two more screaming sixes - over long-on and covers - off Morkel in the 19th over, to push Bangalore to a good total but Raina decided to gatecrash the party.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Ganguly joins Pune Warriors


Sourav Ganguly, the former India captain, has been signed by Pune Warriors as a replacement for Ashish Nehra, who was ruled out for the remainder of the 2011 season with a finger injury. Ganguly's contract is for a period of one year and is an IPL lifeline to the batsman after he went unsold at the player auction in January, where his base price was $400,000.
Sourav Ganguly leads Kolkata Knight Riders' victory lap after beating Mumbai Indians, Kolkata Knight Riders v Mumbai Indians, IPL 2010, Kolkata, April 19, 2010Ganguly will be vice-captain to Yuvraj Singh and is likely to join the Pune squad ahead of their match against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium on May 4.
"We were waiting for Ashish Nehra's fitness report and ultimately the report came yesterday," Abhijit Sarkar, Pune's team director, told PTI. "I was already in talks with Ganguly and we decided that the amount of experience that Sourav has in cricket will no doubt help the team. So we finalised Ganguly last night.
"He is playing in IPL not for money but to prove a point. Our team think-tank felt that Sourav Ganguly is the best possible option available so we went for him. He has been a fighter and a master of comebacks. We are very much confident that he will prove his worth."
Ganguly played for Kolkata Knight Riders in the first three seasons of the IPL and led the team in two of them, while Brendon McCullum was captain for the other. Kolkata fared poorly in those years and are the only franchise not to make the semi-finals. Kolkata did not bid for Ganguly in January despite his name coming up for sale twice, as they revamped their squad entirely, and the batsman later refused a mentoring role with the franchise.
Pune Warriors are bottom of the ten-team league at present, having lost six consecutive matches after winning their first two. Ganguly has an average IPL record - 1031 runs at an average of 28 and strike-rate of 110 - and could strengthen an under-performing and short batting order.

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