For a second time in its seven year history, the Indian Premier League tasted international waters as it moved to the United Arab Emirates for the first leg of the IPL 7 season. While skeptics abounded about the choice of venue as well as the viability factor in financial terms, ultimately cricket proved to be the biggest draw. By the time the UAE leg of the IPL was over, the tables had turned quite literally from last season, bringing fresh excitement and promise to the seven year old tournament.
Arabian Nights, Desert Extravaganza
After a long hiatus, cricket from India touched ground in the gulf region. The original design for the IPL was never for the domestic Indian Twenty20 tournament to leave home for foreign shores. Yet for a second time in its brief history, the organizers felt the need to move the IPL out of the base country over apprehensions about adequate security given the fever of the general elections sweeping the country this summer season. Not to lose base with local spectators though, the organizing committee of the IPL decided to allot the three venues in the UAE in Sharjah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi a total of twenty matches in the first part of the IPL 7 season in April for the rest of the tournament to return to India in May.
Any qualms at the outset about the decision to take cricket to the region that has shared a rather turbulent relationship with India’s cricket history over the last decade and a half in particular were soon assuaged and even drowned in the din of the IPL once it got underway. As things turned out, there was plenty of cheering and not just from the cheerleaders. While the IPL 2 season received encouraging response when it was forced to shift base to South Africa, the overwhelming response, largely and presumably from India’s expatriate contingent, in the Middle East has ensured that the brand IPL itself continued to thrive despite change of venue. The gate revenue from virtually sell-out crowds from every match– confirmed by the Indian cricket board - ensured that the tournament could have been dubbed a successful experiment after the IPL had the opportunity to choose between South Africa and Bangladesh also amongst other alternate possible venues for 2014.
Capacity crowds, a home carnival atmosphere, generally high scoring entertaining matches, world class stadia and facilities and an incident-free tournament ensured that the UAE had won over cricket hearts, particularly so after the ties with Sharjah were broken under rather trying circumstances for Indian cricket. The huge fillip from the Indian contingent staying and working abroad never allowed the tournament to feel homesick and that in itself was something the Indian cricket board could have only hoped for after IPL found itself embroiled in controversies and scandals that almost overshadowed the staging of the tournament back home. Instead the IPL was given not only a rousing welcome but also, such hospitality that there would have been a twinge or two in the hearts of teams, franchisees and fans when the Indian Premier League left the Arabian nights behind to return home.
Spinning Ta bles
Perhaps the biggest draw for the spectators of the IPL 7 season lay in the fact that the tournament did not pan out along predictable lines. One would have thought that given that the tournament is in its seventh year, some teams would have completely dominated the standings. Fortunately for IPL in the UAE, that was not the case. Instead, the tournament brought forth exciting new team lineups as a result of player reshuffles and while a few players struggled to find their feet with their new franchisees, others thrived beyond expectations. Kings XI Punjab, who have been struggling to get a foot in the door in the IPL in the boardroom as well as on the field, found themselves on the top of the world while last year’s ecstatic champions, the Mumbai Indians, were languishing rather ignominiously at the bottom by the time the UAE journey was complete. While Kings XI Punjab walked away from the UAE with a clean five wins out of five matches record, the Mumbai Indians found themselves diametrically on the opposite side of the spectrum, failing to record a single win after five matches. It went downhill very quickly for the Mumbai Indians who boast of a world class bench of support staff that includes Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Robin Singh, Jonty Rhodes, Anil Kumble to mention only a few. Unfortunately that failed to translate into a winning formula and process with the play on the field leaving a lot to be desired from a team who seemed to have finally got their design and act together last year to lift both, the IPL trophy and the Champions League Twenty20 trophy, last year. However, the Mumbai Indians never found their rhythm in the desert sands and therefore, raised no storm for the crowds to cheer about. They, however, provided great entertainment by allowing opposing team such as the Kings XI Punjab to completely dominate the action, particularly with the bat.
Expectations were high from the Royal Challengers Bangalore yet again and although the team did get off to a good start with two wins off successive matches, the next three matches failed to yield any points. A couple of rather low scoring matches also included one that involved the Royal Challengers Bangalore who were shot out for seventy by the Rajasthan Royals. The Rajasthan Royals themselves were a tad fortunate in that they snuck through to the third position by virtue of the tied Super Over match against the Kolkata Knight Riders that saw the former win the contest on the basis of greater number of boundaries scored.
The story proved little different for the other teams who returned with a mixed bag of results. In the end, the mid-section saw four teams tied on eight points with two wins and three losses each after five matches respectively and these included the Kolkata Knight Riders, the Royal Challengers Bangalore, the Sunrisers Hyderabad, and the Delhi Daredevils. Amongst the highlights shared amongst these middling teams would include Chris Lynn’s catch on the boundary that kept the Kolkata Knight Riders in the news and Bhuvneshwar Kumar giving Dale Steyn a run for his money with his bowling for the Sunrisers Hyderabad even as the team found a dependable Australian batting partnership in opener Aaron Finch and number three David Warner. Ajinkya Rahane was a rarity in that he was the only Indian in the list of highest run getters to keep the home flag flying high even as the bowling list seemed to do more justice to the home contingent although Sunil Narine and Lasith Malinga continued to hold fort as prime foreign bowling talent. J.P. Duminy kept it interesting for the Delhi Daredevils who were saved the blushes by the bottom trailing Mumbai Indians.
Repeat victors from previous seasons, the Chennai Super Kings remained just below the radar, deservedly one rank below the Kings XI Punjab after the latter gave the Mahendra Singh Dhoni-led IPL team a hiding of a chase they barely saw coming. The Chennai Super Kings managed to maintain a respectable record, pulling out four wins out of five matches and that was largely due to a winning combination at the top of the batting order.
Foreign Bats, Desi Beat
Speaking of successful batting combinations, while the Mumbai Indians were disappearing like quick sand, the Chennai Super Kings managed to walk away rather respectfully from the UAE leg even while remaining under the radar. Huge credit would then go to their two new opening batsmen providing maximum entertainment and keeping the team high on the points table. With Twenty20 being a largely batting dominated sport, it seemed the IPL had lived up to those high entertainment expectations in the UAE with teams benefitting more than others from the player reshuffle earlier in the year.
Where Mumbai Indians struggled to find a consistent opening pair, the Chennai Super Kings were more than happy to reap the benefits of snatching Dwayne Smith at the auctions. Mumbai Indians’ loss was the Chennai Super Kings’ gain simply because where Michael Hussey has struggled to find his rhythm in the opening slot for the Mumbai Indians, Smith has settled in rather beautifully into the role and complemented the destructive New Zealander, Brendon McCullum, who found his sure footing once more since that lung opener in 2008 when he took the IPL by storm.
Even the Chennai Super Kings managed to stay just below the radar and their openers managing to prove the maximum thrust, even they could not overshadow the elation of the ascendance of another team in the IPL. Poaching worked wonders for the Kings XI Punjab in that the world was provided with the exhilarating M&M show. Glenn Maxwell, in particular, was an expensive buy for the Mumbai Indians last year but was underutilized in an over-stacked talent rack. At the Kings XI Punjab team, the Australian cricketer has enjoyed a free rein and in his partnership with another dynamic young South African batsman in David Miller, revealed Kings XI Punjab as serious contenders to the throne in 2014. The Maxwell-Miller partnership broke the backbone of more than one team and it is not easy to ruffle the feathers of the otherwise cool Mahendra Singh Dhoni who has skippered the Chennai Super Kings since the inception of the IPL. Maxwell in particular was not only majestic but also, brutal in his stroke play, essentially plundering at will to score in the nineties twice and on three occasions, coming close to scoring his first IPL century. That minor blip, however, could not stop the Kings XI Punjab from scoring five wins on the trot and essentially being the raging success in the desert leg of the IPL.
While Maxwell’s bat yielded 300 runs from five matches at a fearsome strike rate of 201.34 with an average of sixty, the destructive damage with the bat was complimented by the fifteen wickets shared between Laxmipathy Balaji and Sandeep Sharma, lending a nice balance to the winning strategy of the high flying Kings XI Punjab. It was hard to look past the team who virtually dominated all the headlines coming out of the Arabian caravan.
Mirage in the sand
But not everything in the UAE was a rip roaring success. Although the overall and feel of the experience of the IPL in the UAE appeared a resounding success, there were many minor disappointments on the player level that would have been hoped to have been corrected when IPL 7 – Part 2 got underway in India. For one, some of the Indian batting contingent failed to live up to the hype much to the disappointment of the crowds hoping to see some of India’s finest talent.
All eyes were on the Royal Challengers Bangalore’s most exorbitant buy, Yuvraj Singh, who was yet to justify the price tag of Rs.14 crores when the IPL left the UAE. But the Royal Challengers Bangalore’s disappointments in the UAE stemmed from the fact that many of their big guns including the explosive Chris Gayle remained largely silent. Likewise, much was expected from the Delhi Daredevils captain, Kevin Pietersen, after his retrenchment from England cricket’s plans for the future. However, a finger injury saw him miss the beginning of the Arabian escapade, proving to be a dampener.
India’s comeback hopeful, Virender Sehwag, showed semblance of brilliance with his stint with the Kings XI Punjab but nothing concrete enough to croon about even as his team unearthed a few match winners including their skipper, George Bailey. Sehwag’s former India opening team mate, Gautam Gambhir, fared even worse. As skipper of the Kolkata Knight Riders, Gambhir was expected to kick off matters for his team. Instead Gambhir would want to forget the UAE sojourn in a hurry given that he collected three ducks on the trot as his team struggled to get momentum going their way.
Although the IPL 7 was far from complete, it had to be said that the overall experience of the IPL in the UAE was a resounding one, one that held promise that mainstream cricket, apart from being proxy hosts for the Pakistan cricket, could return to the region. The overwhelming majority of cricket loving expat population made it a relatively cost effective, worthwhile enterprise, one that could be explored by the BCCI for further commercial ventures. The IPL was made to feel at home even before it touched base back home. That the BCCI was elated by the prospect was more than evident when they released a statement that appreciated the Gulf adventure for “an unprecedented success in terms of fan turnout, television viewership, digital views and ticket collection”. While teams would look to maintain or improve their momentum depending on how they fared in the Middle East, the IPL and spin offs may have just found a home away from home in the United Arab Emirates.
No comments:
Post a Comment