The IPL Athletic Supporter's Note - IV

Last night, there was an interview with Mr. Ram Reddy of the Deccan Chronicle, the owner of the Deccan Chargers. It was refreshing to see a team-owner who believes in his team, underplays his own role and yet, comes across as someone with a very strong will to win.

The match itself was a confirmation of my deepest fear about the Mumbai Indians. I think they are a batsman short. There is a lot of cannon-power at the top of the order, and all too quickly, one sees Harbhajan’s name in the batting order.

Where is Luke Ronchi? He is a good keeper and an explosive bat. With him opening alongside Jayasuriya, one can have Tendulkar drop himself to ‘three’ and deepen the list of batsmen in the line-up.

That said, the Chargers are looking increasingly like a well-oiled machine that is high on self-belief. Last year, I got the feeling that they were somewhat on the defensive with Shahid Afridi trying his helicopter whirlies a bit too often and not succeeding. This year, they look like a settled unit with both Gilchrist and Gibbs firing at the top.The unchanged line-up from the previous year means Gichrist knows his resources a lot better. His faith in Venu Rao as a bowler reflects that.

A year ago, I was laughed at for saying that Pragyan Ojha was the best slow left-armer in the country. Need to meet up with those guys again. Ojha bowled quite beautifully and mixed his deliveries well. I just hope he does not fade away like Murali Kartik who promised so much when he appeared on the scene.

The CSK-KKR match? Well, IPL could do well without two things. The first is the points sharing system. If a match can be abandoned, why cannot it be replayed, considering T20 is such a short format? And after all the entire IPL effort is towards entertainment. And what better entertainment than cricket itself.

The second thing is the D/L method for T20 – there is no sense in playing five overs per team cricket. That sort of thing used to work well in the matches I played as a kid, at Somasundaram Ground. Not at this level. If you can’t get twenty overs of cricket in, simply find a way to replay the match.

Before I log off, one last observation. Mr. KKR team owner has been stung by the criticism and has hooked up with ‘Headlines Today’ to get his anguish across to the public. This morning, there was a feature on the KKR team owner – about him having been ‘hurt’ and about him having a ‘heavy heart’, etc. All this with a flashing url of the KKR team owner’s blog.

I for one, did not know that news channels could plug stuff as part of their news content.
But I know now.