Teams playing above themselves are always fun to watch!

so the mumbai indians are out of this year's ipl and they have four long days to endure before their last match, and their flight to mumbai. yes, i did say "out" because while there is an elaborate set of events that could materialise to put them into the semi-final, they will be the first to put their hands up and say that they are not among the top four teams this year.

so then, why are they not among the top four? when the team was put together it was clear that there were two assumptions on which a good run in the tournament was based upon. that in itself is not unusual-delhi daredevils bet heavily on the indian bowlers in their ranks, deccan chargers bet almost entirely on the overseas batsmen. however neither assumption came good. a good attacking number three in shikhar dhawan hardly got any cricket and had to go home with injury and the wicketkeeper didn't come good. mumbai indians played pinal shah for a long time and you can only play a keeper who can't really contribute with the bat if everyone else is pulling along nicely.

but the major reason is that the major players didn't deliver. jayasuriya had a couple of moments-he was nowhere near being the dominant player he was last year, tendulkar tried different positions and looked good without scoring as many runs as he threatened to. in retrospect number three was probably the best number for him with duminy to follow. zaheer khan was injured midway through and couldn't play too many games and harbhajan singh blew hot and blew cold.

there was one other reason, symptomatic of a deeper malaise. everytime the game got close mumbai indians seemed one step behind the opposition. you saw that in ipl 08 and now again in ipl 09.every close match was lost and there has to be a reason. my feeling is that there was anxiety about winning and often that is the greatest hindrance to winning.

the teams that are playing the best are also the teams that seem to be enjoying themselves the most-delhi daredevils, chennai super kings, rajasthan royals and deccan chargers. the last two are playing above themselves and it is always great fun watching teams like those.