There has been delay. There has been discussion. There has been a great deal of expense, across the board. There has been fear. At every turn, there has been a challenge and the IPL has come through it. While it may not look like any IPL we are used to, it might just help us forget how broken our world is right now, at least for three-four hours every evening (give or take a Super Over). And it all starts with "
El Clasico".
While Mumbai Indians have been based in Abu Dhabi all this while, Chennai Super Kings will only get their first taste of the conditions they face tomorrow... tomorrow. And that's not good. Even coach Stephen Fleming said so to the CSK website: "I must admit, going to Abu Dhabi without seeing the wicket or assessing the conditions is going to be one of the big challenges to start with."Chennai Super Kings: 1 Shane Watson, 2. Ambati Rayudu, 3 Faf du Plessis, 4 MS Dhoni (capt, wk), 5 Kedar Jadhav, 6 Dwayne Bravo, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Piyush Chawla, 9 Deepak Chahar, 10 Shardul Thakur, 11 Imran Tahir
Mumbai Indians: 1 Rohit Sharma (capt), 2 Quinton de Kock (wk), 3 Suryakumar Yadav, 4 Ishan Kishan, 5 Kieron Pollard, 6 Hardik Pandya, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Nathan Coulter-Nile, 9 Rahul Chahar, 10 Trent Boult, 11 Jasprit Bumrah
Mumbai have this thing with the opening game of a season - they haven't won one of those since 2012. But that could change in a matter of hours given their outstanding record against Super Kings - eight wins in the last ten games. Super Kings' bowing attack relies heavily on early success. In fact, since 2018, they have picked up 56 wickets in the powerplay, the best among all teams. Chahar is responsible for 25 of them, again the best among all teams. Early wickets on slow pitches means Dhoni can control the game so much better with the spinners to follow. Question is, will that work against Mumbai, who have a hitter as dangerous as Hardik Pandya lurking as low as No. 6.