Well one has to no doubt be fed up with the ongoing Indian Premier League in its fourth successive edition and bound to become more and more worthless and boring at the same time. Now, it would come in as another blow when a neighboring country tries to copy the same irrespective of whether it would become successful or not. As stated earlier, the 4th edition of the IPL is nothing but total crap with lack of any cricketing technique. One can hardly see any high scores chased down or any sort of big hitting from the blades of say Brendon McCullum.I hardly have the patience to go through the website to check out who holds the orange and the purple cap and on the other side who is the topper on the charts. But, through newspapers and sports magazines, I can say that the real action is missing out totally not partially. There is no Anil Kumble who could do wonders with the ball and people like Shane Warne and Muralitharan who have shown great expectations are highly below the mark with the ball deciding not to respect these elders in the game. Likewise, Glenn McGrath is missing from the action from the past 2 years.And, coming to the batting, someone like Sanath Jayasuriya and Brian Lara have been shown the gates before they had decided to enter one when they were not picked up by any of the franchisees. With that apart, now one more goat is found following its parent when the SLC not only plans to do a replica of the same but also ends up kick starting one. Pakistan had one shown interest in holding such an event on its soil but may be didn't go ahead with the same citing security reasons hosting and venue reasons. Well, I'm afraid whether this would definitely work.Though most of them would now be looking forward to Entertainment,travel & living blogs, the Indian premier League is of some interest but that can never be guaranteed regarding the Sri Lankan counterpart whatsoever. I wonder what teams would feature in the Sri Lankan Premier League with the entire nation as big as one state in India. Perhaps! Every gully will have a team of its own. Added to that, the Sri Lankan cricket board should also look out for the dates on the calender with the entire year busy. All cricket boards cannot be lucky as the BCCI are.
Well as long as there are teams like the Rajasthan Royals, teams like Royal Challengers Bangalore have hardly any sort of problem. Can anyone of you imagine a total of just 130 in a T20 game and that too by a team that involves a batsman who has set the record for scoring the fastest hundred in the IPL? Can anyone of you imagine a team to have 4 wickets in hand at the end of their 20th over and yet end up scoring just over six runs an over? Yes, that is the Rajasthan Royals for you. The team which won 11 out of the 14 games scheduled and the title a couple of years back.The eitire innings of the Rajasthan Royals had only one hit out of the stands when Abhishek Raut hit the lone six of the innings. Coincidentally, he was also the top scorer of the match when he score an unbeaten 32 runs to push the run rate past 6 an over. All the Royal Challengers Bangalore required was just 5 bowlers all of whom bowled their full quota of 4 overs each. This can happen only when the opposition batsmen offer no resistance and challenge as well. If not for Anil Kumble, all other bowlers returned with wickets against their names.However, this doesn't matter much for cricket is a team game unlike badminton or tennis that is played between two individuals. Luckily, there was also an over maiden which belonged to Pankaj Singh. Overs rarely go maiden as far as a T20 game is concerned. However, one cannot blame it completely on the Rajasthan Royals' batsmen for their debacle, for even the Royal Challengers Bangalore followed a callous approach when they lost 5 wickets enroute to their successful run chase of 131 runs. Nevermind that the Bangalore team reached the winning run in just over 15 overs, but it is the approach which makes the difference.It is such games that come crucial in terms of a tie breaker when two or more teams end up with equal number of points. One fascinating thing about the Rajasthan Royals bowlers was that they never bowled an extra delivery for an innings that lasted close to a hundred deliveries long. Even the Rajasthan Royals followed their opposition when even they like their opposition never handed the ball to a sixth bowler with 3 of the 5 bowlers set to bowl their complete quota of 4 overs. Yousuf Pathan would have come in handy in such cases and Adam Voges being given another chance would not have proved costly.At the end of the day, there was a bad match for cricket fans who want some decent action from the batsmen especially.
Well as the game of the T20 cricket goes, just one solid batsman is more than enough for the opposition to start thinking what to do next. And, this time it was Yousuf Pathan who did the job for Mumbai Indians (the job of evoking panic among the Mumbai Indians). Everything was going on smoothly until Yousuf Pathan stepped in and tried to do a Virender Sehwag Shahid Afridi when he scored the fastest hundred in ODIs the Indian Premier League by consuming the same number of balls as that of Shahid Afridi in ODIs. Unfortunately, Pathan couldn't do what Afridi could do when he scored the world's fastest hundred.It was a team effort from the Mumbai Indians' part wherein, as many as 6 batsmen who took to the crease scored double digit scores and all of them had their strike rates above hundred with only two of them ending upo scoring at a strike of less than 150. There were 7 bowlers from the Rajasthan Royals side who tried to stop the team work of Sachin Tendulkar's men which was finally valiant. A score of 200+ on the board could not be stopped from scoring despite the efforts of Shane Warne and Shaun Tait who were the only well set bowlers from the Rajasthan Royals' side.Rajasthan Royals never ever deserved to win despite the top class batting of Yousuf Pathan for the sole reason that cricket is a team sport and not an individual's game like table tennis and badminton for just one player to outplay the other. If Yousuf Pathan's score of 100 is deducted, the score from the remaining 8 batsmen from the Rajasthan Royals' side including the extras comes up to be 108 runs from 13.5 overs. Yousuf Pathan's score of 100 was close to 50% of the team total excluding the extras which accounted for just 5 runs. It was a mistake from Shane Warne when he bought on Amit Uniyal when Shaun Tait could have done a better job with the bat.Had there been one man in addition to Yousuf Pathan, Rajasthan Royals would have made the match as theirs. Though there was Paras Dogra who scored 41 runs that was bettered by only Yousuf Pathan, the players who followed Pathan's dismissal could not support him from the other end and under pressure, Dogra had to sacrifice his wicket by getting out in the same fashion as Yousuf Pathan. One thing that can be noticed from the scorecard is that the two batsmen who had taken the Mumbai bowlers' for a run could not be claimed by any bowler and had to make a mistake on their own which saw them get out. But, a team effort always pays which is once again evident from the Mumbai Indians.
The Rajasthan Royals entered the second edition of the Indian Premier League as the defending champions and also had a decent run in the tournament if not for some ups and downs, one of them being the collapse of their batting line up for the lowest total of the tournament when they were bowled out for a partly score of just 58 against the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Entering the tournament as the defending champions, as the tournament progressed, they were not even the team to beat and likewise didn't even make it to the last four of the series. However, yesterday's win over Middlesex team in the British Asian cup at Lord's. It was indeed a good show by Shane Warne and his team that included the likes of Sohail Tanvir who was not available for the second edition of the Indian Premier League held at South Africa earlier this year. In the T20 format 0f the game of cricket, it is evident from most of the matches that there can be one good or bad over that can change the fortunes of the match. And this match was no exception either. It was the 32 runs that Dimitri Mascarenhas scored towards the end of the Rajasthan Royals' innings at a strike rate of 200.0 that made a difference for the Royals.It was as good as that the Rajasthan Royals who were equipped with star international players like Shane Warne, Sohail Tanvir, Justin Langer and others were facing the minnow team in Middlesex who were having just a bunch of eleven players, majority of whom have an experience of playing just domestic tournaments. With most of the English international players playing for the coming Ashes, hardly any international player could be seen in the Middlesex squad and some relief for the Middlesex team was in the form of Murali Karthik and Owasis Shah who atleast could be of some international standards.However, if the scorecard is given a look, Murali Karthik had a decent run when he returned up with figures of 1/18 from his allotted 4 overs. But, with regards to Shah's performance, there was nothing different from other domestic cricketers who could do just that. This I guess should be a welcome victory for the Rajasthan Royals who had upset their fans by not even making it to the semi finals of the second edition of the Indian Premier League. One must consoder the Rajasthan Royals to be lucky enough for having a series eith just one match to go, winning which would see them emerge as champions irrespective of anything else.
Even after a year and a three fourth being passed since the West Indian legend Brian Lara retired from all forms of international cricket, it is just not possible to forget the batting of Brian Charles Lara, which was a combination of delightful flamboyance and solidity. The man who had cited that he would continue playing test cricket, which Lara calls it to be a version where the real challenge of the game lies. And on that particular day in the match against England in the super eight of the ICC world cup 2007, Lara says it is all over. including test cricket. How disappointing?Still, not all hopes were lost by Lara's fans over the world, for once Lara hinted that he would be entertaining his fans in the ICl, by signing up for the Essel's group. His statement then was "t gives me great pleasure to join the Indian Cricket League. You can't keep me too far from cricket and hence I return to the game in this exciting new avatar that the Essel Group has launched". This I hope would have bought back the lost smiles on the faces of the fans of this great batsman, who can surprise the opposition by stroking the ball into places where you would not expect him to do so.But, even this didn't last much longer, for Lara was forced out of the tournament owing to a fractured arm that he is believed to have sustained while playing in Trinidad & Tobago. The last time one could see Brian Lara in action was against Hyderabad Heroes where he scored just 16 (15b,2x4). Since then its always been a wait game for his fans, who are expecting him to be available sooner or later. But, this has never happened so far. And is it never bound to happen?So, it is as though the man who can tame the bowlers of the world with typical nonchalance is now a matter of the past.Someone like Inzy, Jayasurya, Shane Warne, Sourav Ganguly, Glenn McGrath, Shane Bond and much others who have called it a day from international cricket are now found entertaining their fans by participating in leagues like the IPL and ICL. This is an undisputed fact that these leagues are to a greater extent colourful due to the presence of these stalwarts. Missing players like Wasim Akram, Brian Lara, Steve Waugh etc really hurts. But, nothing can be done regarding the same what so ever. All that can be done is to just rewind the button and watch these players' highlightes during their playing days. Last but not the least, even now if Lara makes a return to the ICL, it would make the cricketing fans jump with joy.
Well it looked as though Sourav Ganguly couldn't get out of the first meeting with the Rajasthan Royals-the captain of whom slammed Ganguly of sacrificing the spirit of the game when he appealed against a suspicious catch claimed to have been taken by Greame Smith.Congrats! Ganguly won that encouter.And once again "ONLY THAT ENCOUNTER".Lets not talk or cast our eyes on the result of that match.This was what happened in the first meeting between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Rajasthan Royals.
This devil never stopped the Kolkata Knight Riders for the second time as well as the Kolkata Knight Riders though this time not owing to any controversial appeals,but some self destruction by them when they missed two run out chances in the Rajasthan Royals' innings.And this time Ganguly had no one to take the blame.Some though not good batting,it was a good recovery from the Kolkata Knight Riders.From 59/2 after 10 overs to 147 at the end of the innings.
But,one familiar face and name continues to hit our senses is that of Yousuf Pathan.I feel that he's probably the best bargain in the IPL.Bought for $0.475M,this amount never went to drains. Rather it was returned with compound interest I believe.Once again failing to break his own record of scoring the fastest fifty for yet another time.And this time another big one would have seen the record bettered by 2 balls.And before this,the same chap was found to take a crucial wicket of David Hussey (who enjoyed the distinction of being the highest six hitter until Sanath Jayasuriya overtook his tally )
After this match,the one name that would be in the betters' as well as the cheering fans would be Yousuf Pathan.
This is the match between the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Rajasthan Royals which the Rajasthan Royals as expected thrashed the Royal Challengers Bangalore by some relief serving 65 runs (compared to their crushing defeat in the previous matches).The first time when the two teams met in the first round robin stage,the Royal Challengers were royally thrashed by 7 wickets with 17 balls remaining.A modest total of 135 that would hardly worry the team consisting of players of the batting caliber of Yousuf Pathan,Swapnil Asnodkar,Justin Langer,Kamran Akmal and Shane Warne who did wonders in the first match against the Deccan Chargers.
This I bet would have been the worst defeat that Rahul Dravid would have had to think over,for it came despite a mind blowing innings of a 36 ball unbeaten 75.And who wouldn't be? With as many as 6 huge sixes and an equal number of boundaries. Isn't this an almost impossible task as far as Dravid's batting style is taken into consideration?
The bowling done by the Royal Challengers team was all the most fascinating.If not all of them,I bet most of them were full-tosses.None of the bowlers really bothered about maintaining any line or length.Just like the Sehwag saying "If the ball is there to be hit I will go for it"...something like..and the bowlers were just like that..."If the ball is there to be bowled we'll go for it"..no matter what length or line.
Congrats Anil kumble on taking the first wicket of the tournament!And the rest of the Royal Challengers' batsmen failing to cross the two digit mark and my goodness 4 ducks!!Good bowling or poor batting?Well you readers choose..
The next time a team takes on the Royal Challengers Bangalore,I would suggest that the team rest most of its frontline bowlers.Atleast then can the match be interesting?Well not!
In the beginning of the inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League,the Rajasthan Royals were considered to be the modest of all opposition.And much to the amazement of the viewers out there,it looked the same for the Rajasthan Royals team were found to lose the first two matches of the tournament.But,it was also the same surprise when the same team is now the top team even ahead of the Chennai Superstars-who started their games with a bang by winning most of their games.
But,today if the Rajasthan Royals are compared to what they were in the beginning of the tournament,it looks really fantastic and also one of the best contenders for the tournament.And something to be noticed is that the Rajasthan team have a different match winner out there every time they take on the field.Some names include Yousuf Pathan,Shane Warne,Shane Watson,Asnodkar and this time it was Sohai Tanvir.And just take a look at the bowling figures.My God!!It is the third time that the record has been broken after Sanath Jayasuriya and Glenn McGrath hod it against their names a week ago.
Only Morkel could post a 40+ individual score,and that too with a modest strike rate (when it comes to T20 cricket) of 127.Only four of them posting totals of over 10.The batsmen belonging to the Rajasthan Royals had absolutely nothing to do but just keep the score board ticking by rotating the strike as it is done in test cricket.Finally a look at Sohail Tanvir's feat on youtube.NJOY!!!
The awe inspiring role by Shane Warne would not be a wrong statement as the legendary Aussie is once again proving his caliber by taking on the role of captain,a frontline bowler and a coach as well.The Australian Cricket Board would have taken a harsh decision against Warne by not giving him the captaincy despite his abilities,and later withdrawing his vice captaincy too.But,thank god that the Rajasthan Royals didn't commit the same mistake.
Warne could get most from even the new comers viz Yousuf Pathan,Swapnil Asnodkar, Ravindra Jadeja and Mahesh Rawat.If not all,three of the aforementioned could prove their worth on the cricket field.And this time the jack pot winner being Swapnil Asnodkar who belted the Knight Riders' bowling along with Yousuf Pathan who both of them notched 29 ball half centuries.A rare feat that one comes across I can say.
And this time,for a change Sourav Ganguly was found to go the Dravid way by scoring a half century as a one day batsman does.But,even that in vain as Dravid's went.If there were some batting in Yousuf Pathan,Ravindra Jadeja and Swapnil Asnodkar,the second innings was dominated by the bowling department of Rajasthan Royals which included the likes of Shane Watson,Sohail Tanvir and Trivedi,all of whom took 2 wickets each.And a trmendous support from captain-coach Shane Warne.
Well..this is the kind of motivation one needs.Full marks to u!!
After some consolation win against Mumbai Indians at Mumbai,there was some relief for the Royal Challengers team.Though the win not being a convincing one as far as the Royal Challengers were concerned,it could have been a motivation for the upcoming matches involving tough teams like Kings XI Punjab,Delhi Daredevils and Chennai Superstars.But,as a Banglorean,it was once again disappointing for me especially since the Royal Challengers were back to their routine of losing matches. And this time they did just the same,by forfeiting the match to Rajasthan Royals.The word Royal being common to both the teams out there.But,only one team emerged as Royals,and that being the Rajasthan team.
If not for Ross Taylor who scored 44 runs off 20 balls,it was as though the rest of them were playing a one day match over there.Most of the strike rates falling between 100 and 150 and some even in the range of less than 100.And as it usually happens with the Royal Challengers,six out of ten batsmen had strike rates of less than 100.And our gr8 Rahul Dravid could score nothing but a golden duck.It looks like the Wall has mistaken the word Golden duck with that of a goose that lays golden eggs.Ha ha Just kidding!!!
If one could take a look into the Thursday's match between Rajasthan Royals and Deccan Chargers,one comment that I could see was that "it was really disappointing to see the Deccan Chargers end as losers despite the fastest century by Andrew Symonds",also not to mention the maximum number of sixes hit by the same Andrew Symonds.Now,I wonder as to weather it was only Andrew Symonds who was supposed to do all the hitting work,while the rest of the Deccan Chargers' men just feeling charged rather than proving themselves to the name-Chargers?
With Andrew Symonds scoring at a rate of about 12 per over,the rest of the Chargers's team score was believe it or not just above 8 per over compared to the overall run rate of 10+.After Symonds' score of 117,the second best score of the Royals' team being 36 off 30 balls by Rohith Sharma.And with only 5 out of 7 batsmen playing,what better result does the Deccan Chargers' team deserve?
On the other hand,taking into account the performance of the Rajasthan Royals',first of all I would go in for all praise for Shane Warne,who is lesser known as batsmen,but could still see his team through by blasting 19 runs off the last over.This is what a responsible captain is supposed to do.And not only that..the team saw atleast 5 batsmen contributing to their side.The man who proved a point being off course Yousuf Pathan.Some positives that I could also witness is that for Shahid Afridi-who known for his batting poweress,but was found to dominate with the ball.
And one more thing that needs to be highlighted is that the match witnessed both the fastest hundred (by Andrew Symonds) and the fastest fifty by Yousuf Pathan(in 24 balls).
Hmm..it is exciting to see hot bucks being involved in the recently launched-The Rebel Indian Cricket League & the Multi Million Dollar Indian Premier League.These leagues provide the fans to watch out for their cricketing heros viz Brian Lara,Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne,Sanath Jayasuriya,Inzy and much more who have retired from their respective nations after serving them for a long period.At the same time,these leagues attract players from their cricketing nations to play for these leagues rather than play for their motherland.Such players include Shane Bond,Adam Gilchrist,Brad Hogg,Scott Styris etc naming a few.
The players listed under the second category have all retired from international cricket,with a lot of fuel still left in their tank.I wonder as to what they are going to achieve by joining these leagues other than money.Will the crowd cheering their heroes be the same when they play for these leagues compared to that when they play for their country?And will the players show the same enthusiasm that they show when playing for their respective nations?
I think that the players representing their respective League teams will play only for money rather than to see their team through.A win or a loss to a particular team in these leagues would hardly make a difference to the players unlike when the same players play for their nations.And anyway,let we fans enjoy the turn that Shane Warne gets on the ball,the accuracy of Glenn McGrath,the pace of Shane Bond, Blistering of Brian Lara and Inzy and much more...
