The IPL Watcher
The costliest over ever?
Siddarth Ravindran
25-Feb-2013
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Which was the most expensive over in cricket? The one in which Garry Sobers slammed Malcolm Nash for six sixes, you say, or the one in which New Zealand’s Bert Vance gave away 77 runs. There's a new challenger: The over that cost Kings XI Punjab $140,000 on Wednesday. That was what Kumar Sangakkara’s men were docked for being an over behind schedule during the loss to Rajasthan Royals.
The IPL’s crackdown on tardy over-rates had started with four captains being slapped with fines of $20,000 each within the first two days of the tournament. Kumar Sangakkara, as a repeat offender on Wednesday, found himself $40,000 poorer while the rest of his team lost $10,000 each. The flat fines are likely to prove a greater deterrent than the match-fee penalties in international cricket, which barely impacted the stars' pockets, and could especially affect the fringe players. However, given that bad habits die hard, those in the firing line may push for a revival of John Buchanan’s multiple-captains theory just to share the load..
Full postThe most six-happy team in IPL
Deccan Chargers hit 99 sixes in IPL 2, and this year they're on course to become the first team to hit 100 sixes in a tournament
S Rajesh
25-Feb-2013
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| Adam Gilchrist: nine sixes in IPL 3, and 57 in all IPL matches © AP |
Adam Gilchrist, with nine sixes, and Andrew Symonds (eight) have been the chief instigators for ensuring that a quarter of the runs scored by Deccan have been in sixes. Gilchrist has the most sixes in all IPLs put together, and he’s clearly showing no signs of letting up. Chennai is well represented too, with Mathew Hayden hitting 11 sixes and Suresh Raina nine.
At the other end of the scale are the Kolkata Knight Riders, averaging a puny three sixes per match. Owais Shah is their leading six-hitter with five, but 13 batsmen from other teams have done better than him. Mumbai Indians are pretty low in that table as well, but their captain has shown that you don’t need to hit sixes to score quickly – he’s hit only one in 165 deliveries, and yet he has scored 248 runs at a strike rate of 150.30.
| Team | Matches | 6s | 6s per match | Total runs | % runs in sixes |
| Deccan Chargers | 4 | 28 | 7.00 | 681 | 24.67 |
| Chennai Super Kings | 6 | 36 | 6.00 | 964 | 22.41 |
| Royal Challengers Bangalore | 6 | 32 | 5.33 | 924 | 20.78 |
| Rajasthan Royals | 5 | 22 | 4.40 | 792 | 16.67 |
| Kings XI Punjab | 5 | 21 | 4.20 | 797 | 15.81 |
| Mumbai Indians | 5 | 24 | 4.80 | 921 | 15.64 |
| Delhi Daredevils | 6 | 24 | 4.00 | 937 | 15.37 |
| Kolkata Knight Riders | 5 | 15 | 3.00 | 695 | 12.95 |
Umps aren't chumps
KSCA Stadium, Bangalore, Thursday afternoon
Carlyle Laurie
25-Feb-2013
KSCA Stadium, Bangalore, Thursday afternoon. Rudi Koertzen is standing at the bowler’s end as Anil Kumble sets his field and Virender Sehwag and David Warner get into batting mode. Suddenly Koertzen’s voice booms out across the stadium and out into a million living rooms. Batsmen are you ready? Captain (turning towards Kumble) are you ready? Brian Jerling, are you ready? (This directed at the square-leg umpire). Scorers are you ready? Ladies and gentlemen of Bengaluru, are you ready? Then let’s play.
Apart from a nod to the rarely mentioned tribe of scorers, the guys who man cricket’s engine-room, this was largely gratuitous - the business part of it could have been delivered without the mic - and, well, unbecoming of Koertzen, one day short of his 61st birthday. Umpires have to deal with enough blows to their credibility; do they really need to be made to feel more like chumps?
Full postTendulkar isn't thumping it
Spot of the day: Sachin Tendulkar has a strike-rate of 155.75 after four matches this season despite not having hit a single six
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
Spot of the day: Sachin Tendulkar has a strike-rate of 155.75 after four matches this season despite not having hit a single six. He’s hit plenty of fours though – 28 in his aggregate of 176 – piercing fields with surgical precision using wristy flicks, delicate cuts and steers, and orthodox drives. In the process, he’s showed everyone that you don’t have to thump it in Twenty20.
Full postIPL v EPL, yet again
A report in the Independent says the English Premier League has sold its overseas rights for 2010-2013 for approximately $2.1 billion
Carlyle Laurie
25-Feb-2013
A report in the Independent says the English Premier League has sold its overseas rights for 2010-2013 for approximately $2.1 billion. That’s good news and bad news for the IPL. The bad news of course is that its own TV deal with Sony and the World Sports Group is dwarfed in comparison - approximately Rs 8200 crores (US$1.62 billion) for nine years vs $4.7 billion for three years (including the domestic rights). That sort of puts the IPL in context - but it’s also good news for Lalit Modi and his fledgling league because it gives them something to aim for as they go about smashing revenue records. The EPL, the established brand in roughly the same market, is clearly in Modi's sights.
The really good news for the IPL came from Brand Finance, the global brand valuation firm, which valued the league at $4.13 billion, more than double what it was in 2009. That is still some distance behind the EPL – $12 billion – but Modi will take heart from Brand Finance’s assessment that it has the potential to grow further. The EPL, of course, will have something to say on that.
Full postThe astonishing consistency of Hayden
The touchstone of a great Test batsman has generally been an average of 50; there are fewer than four dozen players in that elite group
Siddarth Ravindran
25-Feb-2013
The touchstone of a great Test batsman has generally been an average of 50; there are fewer than four dozen players in that elite group. When it comes to ODIs, the club gets even more exclusive – only a handful of players have a mean above 50, illustrating that averages reduce with the format.
Which makes it all the more remarkable that five more runs for Matthew Hayden before his dismissal against the Royal Challengers Bangalore on Tuesday would have taken his career Twenty20 average beyond the magic mark of 50. This, from an opener (with fewer chances for an average inflated by not outs) and in a format that demands more risk-taking in batting and little scope to see out bowlers as in the longer forms.
In the absence of the injured MS Dhoni, the Chennai Super Kings have been derided for their over-reliance on Hayden, but if a team must place its faith in one batsman in Twenty20s, it could do far worse than Hayden, who has only two single-digit scores in his past 23 innings.
The makers of the much-hyped Mongoose bat are probably thinking they have zeroed in on the perfect front-man for their product, the contrast between the hulking Hayden and the tiny bat adding to the exoticism. But this is not a man who needs the Mongoose: facing a 151.8kmh thunderbolt from Dale Steyn on a bouncy pitch at the Chinnaswamy, Hayden (using a regular bat) nonchalantly took a couple of paces down the track and cracked the ball through cover for four. Now if his opening partner, the comparatively tiny Parthiv Patel, is given the new bat, and he starts blasting the ball out of the park…well, that’s the time to buy a Mongoose.
Full postWarne on the wane?
Is Shane Warne the IPL’s luckiest captain this season
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
Is Shane Warne the IPL’s luckiest captain this season? Not in terms of matches won – Rajasthan Royals have one win heading into their fifth game on Wednesday – but by occupying once of the four precious overseas slots despite underperforming. He’s taken only one wicket in four games, and his average of 90 is the second worst in the tournament, after his team-mate Shaun Tait’s 101 per wicket. Warne’s economy-rate of 6.92 per over isn’t bad at all, but in two games Rajasthan were defending low totals so teams didn’t need to attack him. He bowled economically in the victory against Kolkata Knight Riders but a team would expect more than 0 for 27 from one of their overseas players.
Figures apart, Warne’s bowling is perhaps at the flattest it’s been. The legbreaks aren’t fizzing out of the hand and ripping off the pitch; the flight, dip and guile that tormented Daryl Cullinan and Englishmen has rarely been on show; and his pace has been slower. Saurabh Tiwary toyed with Warne in the first game and, though his performance against Kolkata was an improvement, Rajasthan need more from their captain than just economy and inspirational Tweets.
Injuries and curious selection have resulted in thin overseas options for Rajasthan though. Graeme Smith and Dimitri Mascarenhas have left, Shane Watson hasn’t arrived, Damien Martyn and Michael Lumb have left the fans cold. And so Warne is among Rajasthan’s best four foreigners. It’s unlikely he’d have made the XI for Bangalore though. Or even for Mumbai, Delhi or Kolkata.
Full postSubroto's Sahara seeks Sachin
The markers have been laid down for the next player auction
Carlyle Laurie
25-Feb-2013
The markers have been laid down for the next player auction. Subroto Roy, whose Sahara group has just won the rights to the Pune franchise, has said he would like Sachin Tendulkar to captain his team - “if he is available.” You wouldn’t expect the qualification from someone who’s used to getting what he wants but in this case, of course, Roy is up against Mukesh Ambani, only the world’s fourth-richest man. There will be other battles – Kochi vs Punjab for Sreesanth (or maybe not!) – but the battle to sign up SRT will spice up what already looks like an intriguing auction. Just as well, then, that the salary cap has been raised to $7 million.
Full postThe most incongruous sight in cricket
Sambit Bal
25-Feb-2013
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Notes from the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore.
1. The pitch is a beauty. It gives the lie to excuses that India can’t produce tracks with pace and bounce. Dale Steyn’s opening overs were electrifying. Albie Morkel got the ball to zip and even Sudeep Tyagi made a few fly. Chennai batted poorly so the game became a mismatch, but ten times out of ten, I would take a pitch that tests the batsmen, even in Twenty20. If India want to stay at the top to the Test table, their young batsmen need to bat on pitches like this.
2. Matthew Hayden and the Mongoose are the most incongruous sight in cricket. It makes him look like he's batting with his son’s bat. In fact, when he is walking with it, the bat looks like a little child holding his fingers. He did play one pull with it against Jacques Kallis, but I was keen to see if he’d keep it on if Steyn came back into the attack. But he ran himself out.
Full postGanguly's catch
He’d been plodding with the bat, hadn’t come on to bowl and as the chase unfolded he saw his team once again being slowly, inevitably overhauled by confident opponents
Carlyle Laurie
25-Feb-2013
He’d been plodding with the bat, hadn’t come on to bowl and as the chase unfolded he saw his team once again being slowly, inevitably overhauled by confident opponents. In the stands, in the press box, in front of those thousands of TV sets in Kolkata, the murmurs grew in sound. “Ganguly’s too old for this game…Ganguly’s lost the fire…Ganguly should be dropped.”
And then, as so often in the past, Ganguly had his moment of defiance, his two-fingered proletariat salute to the world’s richest league. Sourabh Tiwary miscued his shot but it still seemed to be going past Ganguly at short extra cover; the fielder stretched, then stretched some more – the crowd held its breath and you could almost hear the old sinews creak – and, as the ball seemed to have eluded him, his right hand found that extra millimetre and held on. He fell down, momentarily stunned by what he’d done, then got up, checked to see everything was in place, and got on with the game.
The game at hand was lost; the larger game is there to be won, and you can be sure Ganguly - who now has a catch of the match award to his name, who'da thunk it? - will be battling till the last ball.
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