A Hayden off-day in the league stage will help Chennai!

the most fascinating paradox at the ipl is that the first team into the semi-final has done so with very little contribution from its opening pair. in the build up to the ipl, when teams were being analysed, the presence of sehwag and gambhir at the top for the delhi daredevils was considered one of the most crucial areas. they might still fire but they represent only one of many assumptions that have gone wrong (gambhir 204 from 11 innings and sehwag 107 from 7). they are classy players and may still come good and delhi are lucky that they have a few more opportunities before the knockout phase begins.

one possibility is that the spongy bounce here is not helping their timing. both are players who like the ball coming on and often, the quicker it comes the quicker it goes. unlike in the fifty over game (i actually heard one of my commentary colleagues refer to it as the "longer" form of the game!), they don’t have the time to assess the pitch and adjust. and you'll often find good players who are not in the best of form backing themselves to play the shots that they otherwise would have.

you'll notice therefore that if de villiers and dilshan fail to get going, delhi look vulnerable with only karthik really around to bail them out.

the other interesting thing that is happening at the top of the order comes from the chennai super kings. at one end they have a world beater, at the other it doesn't seem to matter. mathew hayden is comfortably the highest run scorer in the tournament (486 runs from 10 innings) but his majestic batting has concealed the fact that at the other end, his partners, parthiv patel, murali vijay and badrinath have scored a total of 109 runs between them. the danger with such skewed run scoring patterns (as with the daredevils) is that if the lead player has an off day he creates a situation that the side is not used to. it might almost benefit the super kings if hayden fails in the next game and the rest rise to the occasion.