Mad as a batter

Twenty20 is still an infant, yet there's enough evidence to say that in this format, only uncertainty is a constant says Rohit Mahajan in this week's Outlook magazine. Twenty20 is not a many-nuanced battle.It's akin to a duel with pistols, a game of chance, not a battle of strategy. Team owners need to understand this.

In this form of the game, in a matter of days, Rajasthan can be bowled out for 58 and then score 211, the highest and lowest totals of IPL-2. Anil Kumble can take five wickets for five runs in one match and follow it up with five (for 165 runs) in the next seven. Yuvraj Singh can take a hat-trick and score a 50 in one game and still lose. Yusuf Abdulla can be much more successful than Zaheer Khan, Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne. Brendon McCullum, hitter of 10 fours and 13 sixers in the first match of IPL-1, can end up with three fours and five sixers after eight matches this year. The anonymous, inexpensive Abhishek Nayar can smite Andrew Flintoff, the most expensive IPL player, for three sixers in one over. And the ageing Rahul Dravid, having opted to not play T20 for India, can completely outshine the high-priced Kevin Pietersen, the big flop of the event this year.

Dylan Cleaver takes a look at the captain of the Kolkata Knight Riders and says the man bumbling around for the gold-plated yet tarnished franchised is but a pale imitation. Brendon McCullum needed to rest before the IPL and he now needs rest from the IPL. Read more in the New Zealand Herald.

There is New Zealand's next captain, giving the signal to the rest of the world that he will walk away if things don't go his way. Anybody who has had anything to do with McCullum will tell you it is not his nature to walk from a scrap, which, again, goes to show how far removed McCullum, IPL version:2 is from the real thing. Daniel Vettori, who has done considerably better with Delhi, will meet McCullum tonight and hopefully offer advice that will lift his heir apparent.