THe IPL Athletic Supporter's Note - XIV

Hard work is good for the soul. But it also cometh in the way of IPL updates. My apologies for the lapses in posting.

Match reviews make sense when they are posted immediately after the match. therefore, I shall not labour over the last three matches. A brief summary is below, just to be honest to the job.

1. RR climbed into the Kings XI attack to post this IPL's highest total. And from there, it was all over. The noteworthy aside here was Sreesanth making his debut in IPL 2. But by giving away 23 in his last over, he made sure that it would not be classified under the 'noteworthy IPL debuts' tag.

2. KKR lost again. To the DD this time. Badly. If there has to be a silver lining here, it would be that we all might have seen the last of Buchanan.

3. Last night, the DC finished off the Mumbai boys. That put paid to my hopes of seeing SRT in the semis, I guess.

After the KKR match came the text messages from my Bong friends, with some really innovative suggestions on what one could do with Buchanan. I got talking the next day with a friend of mine in office. As usual, I was floating a typically wild theory on Buchanan and KKR that had nothing to do with cricket.

My theory is that Indians do not react well to over-analysis. As a race, we seem to be 'flow' people. We know the final goal, but tend to use our own methods or variations of methods to get there. In the Indian system, there may or may not be the one perfect way of doing things. When confronted with a system that demands a fixed way of doing things, we either cannot execute well, or if we manage to do it, execute it mechanically, without inspiration.

I ran this past my friend, who is a strategic planner and therefore, more qualified to judge these things. His instant response was as follows - Western civilizations are process-driven. Indians are not. And he quickly backed it up with the example of Greg Chappell and the Indian team.

Would be a good idea to debate this here.

Fellow cricket-mad Indian, Hemant Kapre wants me to spot my four semi-finalists. After the last two days' matches, I refuse to do so!

For the time being, I will only venture the DD team as a certain semi-finalist.