Somehow, that clever opening line continues to elude me. So, without further ado, on to the two IPL matches that took place on the eve of Sachin Tendulkar's birthday.
The first one was expected to be a classic face-off between two of the muscle teams in the IPL. The Delhi Daredevils' innings was powered by a truly brilliant innings from AB de Villiers. It started off with AB playing rhythm guitar to Tilekeratne Dilshan's robust soloing. And once that ended, the classic soloing began. Full of beautiful phrases straight from the book. Interspersed with some soaring runs and delightful harmonics. At the end of it all, DD had a very strong total to defend.
The Superkings' reply got off well with Matt Hayden muscling and bullying his way through, before the advantage of having a Dan Vettori in the bowling line-up and the pure wisdom of bringing in Ashu Nehra in place of Yomahesh showed through. It was a simple plan, brilliantly executed - push the ball in consistently on the semi-yorker length.
MS Dhoni missed a trick again by not pushing Subra Badrinath up the order. Badrinath is a canny customer. He works the ball around intelligently, and once his eye is in, tonks very well. In my opinion, Badrinath at one end, rotating the strike to give the big hitters a chance would have worked. But alas, he came in too late. And Sehwag's brilliant bowling changes, coupled with some fantastic outfield work by David Warner ensured that there would be no last-over heroics from the Chennai team.
In the end, the better bowling side won. Though it put into shade a truly run-choking, wicket-taking spell from Balaji.
Honestly, the next match, in my head at least, was loaded heavily in favour of the glamour team, the Kolkata Knight Riders. Big names, big comments (from their owner) and big expectations. Strangely, the titel holders, Rajasthan Royals, seem to be the underdogs again. Nothing fancy about them, except a genius captain.
KKR could have also had a good captain. But Buchanan, I guess wants a captain who does exactly what he (Buchanan) feels. And the knowledgeable team owner feels that the greatest captain India has had is no longer good-looking, and has receding hair.
But the match itself was something else. KKR choked off the RR innings with some clever bowling. With the 'ugly' Bengali again showing what he can do and Gayle bowling a decisive spell.
Gayle started off the KKR reply in vintage style, but runs weren't easy to come by for the others. Warne showed us what he can achieve with some classic field placing tricks and sheer presence. And can he lead from the front. Give him a fruit-seller from Paharganj who plays a bit of gully cricket, and Warnah will make him perform. That, dear KKR team-owner, is what a captain does.
One sequence will live in memory.Kamran Khan, the eighteen year-old out of nowhere is called up to bowl the last over. Warne cradles his face in his hands and tells him what to do. And the scrawny left-armer delivers in spades. Alas, team owner, if you had only looked into the past of a certain Saurav Chandidas Ganguly, you might actually have taken a better decision on captaincy.
Ganguly batted quite beautifully, the caresses through the off-side interspersed with trademark Ganguly tonks over the straight field.More importantly, he saw off Warne with consummate ease when the leg-spinning genius came back for his second spell. But the pressure Warne was putting on the batsmen at the other end eventually consumed Ganguly. But he proved a point, and how.
Back to Warne. What is it about his leadership that lets him make players rise above their own limitations? How does this team of relative unknowns play like a champion outfit, fighting and slugging it out? How can one man inject professionalism and inspiration into a bunch of unknowns?
Please do answer, John Buchanan and KKR team owner.
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