Royals dominate in front of sparse crowd

Ever since the construction of Wankhede Stadium in the 1970s, the Cricket Club of India's Brabourne Stadium has more or less found itself being sidelined when it comes to hosting top-flight cricket. As much as it has been due to the CCI's feud with the Mumbai Cricket Association, as responsible has been the lax attitude of its very own members towards hosting big games.

A majority of CCI members are in disdain when it comes to staging of major cricket matches since it disrupts their daily routine. They are deprived of their usually set socialising on the club's greens. Naturally, when the quaint venue staged its first game of the season on Sunday night, it wasn't a startling sight to see a majority of seats in the historical club house and the members' stand, a temporary structure, lying vacant.

What came as a bit of a surprise was the fact that the club house and members' enclosure wasn't an aberration. Almost half the seats in the whole stadium were unoccupied. Perhaps it had something to do with the absence of the home team from Mumbai. And with the match turning out to be yet another one-sided affair, one could virtually count the number of seats that were still occupied, at least in the North Stand.

But Rajasthan Royals, who have adopted CCI as their second home for the season, had no reason to complain at the end of the day. The Royals were in fact relieved to have been able to return to winning ways after a drought of five games. Besides Ajinkya Rahane and Karun Nair's 113-run partnership that set the tone for the night, the Royals had more reasons as well that eventually helped them put one foot in the playoffs.

First and foremost, it was the green-top at the CCI. For Royals, it was the closest they could be to Jaipur, their original home. On a grassy and bouncy track at the SMS stadium, the Royals enjoyed an impeccable run.

The pitch resulted in change of strategies for both the teams. While Rajasthan Royals went in without a specialist spinner, Delhi Daredevils' quest to bolster the pace department with Gurinder Sandhu meant Imran Tahir, their highest wicket-taker this season, had to be benched. With the primary wicket-taker out of action, the onus was on the Daredevils pacers to strike early.

Zaheer Khan appeared to do that in the third over but neither wicketkeeper Kedar Jadhav nor the umpire heard the nick off Shane Watson's inside edge. Then on, to keep the pressure on the batsmen, Delhi Daredevils had to restrict the run flow. They couldn't. As much because of Rahane's ability to find gaps at will as with butter-fingered fielding.

Fielding, they say, is the easiest of three primary skills in cricket. And in Twenty20 cricket, considering the usually low margin of victories, it is more important than in the longer formats. When you drop two regulation catches and continue to leak runs in the field as consistently as Daredevils did, you are bound to let the opposition have a field day.

There is no doubt that the Daredevils have one of the lightest fielding units. As if Zaheer and Amit Mishra's presence doesn't make them a weak fielding lot, Saurabh Tiwary's recent inclusion has meant Daredevils have three men who need to be hidden in the field - something that's virtually impossible with the array of strokes of modern batsmen. All three of them resulted in gifting runs to Royals in the field, with Tiwary also dropping Karun Nair just when he was about to shift gears.

But the syndrome wasn't limited to them. Sandhu, making his IPL debut, misjudged a skier off Rahane's willow, Jadhav, keeping with a swollen palm, failed to collect a couple that resulted in byes. The energy in the field had reached its nadir by the time Nathan Coulter-Nile, the best fielder, missed a regulation attempt in the deep to concede a boundary in the last over.

Besides the two dropped catches in the deep, the Daredevils would have conceded 20 additional runs in the field. Considering the loss margin of 14 runs, the Daredevils would be cursing their butter-fingers for having put them in the soup. It was so bad that the IPL's 500th match - notwithstanding the six abandoned games - would perhaps be remembered for possibly the worst fielding display ever in the tournament.

If the Daredevils were to achieve their highest-ever run chase, they needed a quickfire start and wickets in hand for a late charge. They failed on both counts. In-form openers Mayank Agarwal and Shreyas Iyer couldn't cope with the slight lateral movement that the Royals pacers managed to garner. And Stuart Binny added insult to the Daredevils' fielding woes with an amazing catch on the run and timing his dive to perfection at deep square leg to see the back of Yuvraj Singh.

This meant that JP Duminy was always going to run short of partners by the time the death overs, the weakest link in the Royals' IPL 2015 campaign, began. Once he was caught by Dhawal Kulkarni at short fine leg off the last ball of an impressive spell by James Faulkner, while the Royals wore a relieved look, the scarce spectators started their charge towards the gates.

Come Thursday and the Royals will be hoping for an equally good performance and a far better turnout.