4 Days of IPL is over today. I have seen all the teams play atleast one game. Just thought of writing my initial thoughts from the IPL
1. Wheat & Chaff: IPL Governing Council(Modi) has increased the team number from 8 to 10 too soon. Indian domestic structure does not have 100 quality cricketers to support 10 teams. That means, we will be seeing a lot of poor cricket in this IPL. (This is a bigger problem to TV viewer-ship than world cup fatigue)
Also this year's IPL has a few really strong teams and a few really weak teams. (unlike earlier IPL, more or less most of the teams were equally strong). So predicting a huge number of one-sided matches.
Strong Teams: MI, RCB, CSK, KKR (They will move from mid-tier to strong once Lee, Shakib Al Hasan & Brad Haddin joins them)
Mid-Tier: PSW & RR(Just because of Watson's form & Warne's captaincy)
Weak Teams: DC, KXIP, DD and KTK
2. No Recovery from a poor run: Unlike earlier year's IPL, the possibility of recovering from a poor run and reaching IPL semifinals is very negligible. This is because a team needs to win atleast 9 matches to have some hope of reaching semifinals. To be perfectly safe, the team needs to win 11 matches. Except for mathematical possiblities, 10 matches with a good run rate will surely take a team to the semi-finals. This means no team can afford to lose more than 4 matches
3. Deja Vu: Season 4 seems like a deja-vu of season 1. This is because of the clueless captains(Who gives the crucial18th over to Gomez) and idiot decisions all round(Gambhir waiting for Kallis to get out). Somehow it gives me the feeling that a lot of teams have forgotten about T20 format and learning everything from scratch.
4. Where is the local player: I think it is time, IPL Governing council mandated the IPL teams to play atleast 2 players from the catchment area. How will a Hyderabad fan turn up when they don't see not even one of Hyderabad/AP player in the team?. Thankfully, CSK have proven to be the only outlier - 5 out of their 7 players are from the catchment areas. (Goa is a catchment area for CSK).
What are your observations from the initial days of IPL - Season 4?
8 comments:
Goa isn't a catchment area for CSK, for RCB nly its a catchment area, though Jakati preferred to be with us
And Pune a mid - team ? I don't think so, they are pretty strong if u ask me
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Pune, Rajasthan are in the mid-tier but I feel even bangalore falls in this category.Bowling is good and AB & Dilshan are the only two gud T-20 batsmen n RCB..othrwise I wud rate RCB in mid-tier
And why Kochi too having players like McCullum..Murali..some decent indian bowlers can easily put them in the mid-tier category.Had gomez not bowled tht penultimate over..Im sure Kochi cud hav won..Wud rate Kochi..RCB and Rajasthan at the same category.
I think KTK is also a good team.
Among the weak teams I would list DD
and KXI Punjab.
I think the rest of the teams are more or less the same. Maybe MI is a tad stronger than the rest. Once all the foreign talent gets in then we say. For us, the CSK, Hussey and Dougie will make a big difference.
@ Robin
Any thoughts about today's match.
Heard that Anirudda is carrying some niggles. If thats the case he could be imme replaced by Mukund.
And whats ur take on the Srilankan players leabing IPL. We have in our team 3 Srilankans. I feel its of lesser impact than some other teams especially MI (because of Mallinga).
Waiting to know ur thoughts....
Robin, I think we should have expected a start similar to IPL 1. Most teams have started with a full list of new players so team coherency and the basics will be a little off in the early rounds.
I think this is evident in that plenty of the fielding, communication mistakes and poor performances have been made by internationals or regulars in the Indian national team. Because of this, I don't think the player depth is as much of a problem as you're saying.
Once teams get used to each other and start getting the basics right there will be a flow on effect in other areas of the game and we will see some quality cricket, but it may be toward the back end of the season.
One team i expect to see huge improvement in is DC. They have the players on paper to win games, but like IPL 1 it just isn't happening for them yet.
The only team I see who has come out firing is Mumbai, but their opposition has made it easier on them. If Nannes hadn't gotten injured for the challengers, that could have been a different game.
Hopefully Punjab don't get their act together just yet and Super Kings can go 2/2. On that note, hoping to see some others get a go tonight like Du Plesis and Kulasekara.
Well, Deccan Chargers do have DB Ravi Teja and Pragyan Ojha (though he is from Orissa, he plays in Ranji Trophy for Hyderabad). So DC do have 2 players from their catchment area in their playing XI. Though some teams do not have local playes which i also think is not good for IPL.
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