IPL 3rd week / halfway stage thoughts

At this stage of the IPL, the wheat is finally getting separated from the chaff in terms of team performances. It looks extremely likely that Punjab and Rajasthan will be semi-finalists in some order; Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata are occupying the middle, with Mumbai having the greatest momentum of the four; Bangalore and Deccan look the duffers, with virtually no chance of advancing to the semis.

Of the top teams, Rajasthan has been garnering all the attention. Their fairytale run has been utterly romantic, with Shane Warne walking on water. Certainly, Rajasthan is the one team that people who were neutral at the start of the tournament are most likely to have started supporting, because they are underdogs playing above their game and clearly enjoying it.

But I think it is Punjab that is most likely to go all the way. Sustaining a fairytale is always going to be harder than generating one, which will be Rajasthan’s challenge as expectations get higher further down the line. Punjab, on the other hand, are beginning to look the complete package. The middle order of Sangakkara, Yuvraj and Jayawardene forms the meat; but unlike with many other teams, these superstars are actually performing for Punjab. If one of them fails to get going, the other invariably does. The openers they have tried – James Hopes, Shaun Marsh and Karan Goel – have all been good enough to get them solid starts that this star-studded middle order can build on. At the start of the tournament, I had suggested that bowling would be their weak point because the team is full of bowlers who can be erratic and go for runs. But these bowlers are also wicket-taking bowlers, and Sreesanth, VRV Singh and Chawla have all bowled telling spells. Wickets in T20 are far more significant than in 50/50, so having wicket-taking bowlers in the side, even if they are profligate, is a real bonus. In sheer quality, Punjab’s bowling doesn’t match up to Delhi’s (which probably has the strongest attack in the tournament), but in ability to create an impact over short spans of time it most certainly does. Tying all this together is Irfan Pathan, who has bowled with discipline while constantly looking like getting wickets. I think he has been one of the players of the tournament so far, and he has really rounded off this Punjab side nicely. Brett Lee provided the early spark, but Irfan has been the fulcrum around which this bowling attack has been built. It is indeed telling that the absence of a colossal figure like Lee has hardly been felt by this side, whereas a side like Chennai is looking increasingly bereft without its Aussie superstars.

I have been critical of Yuvraj’s captaincy at the start of this tournament, but it is clear that he has grown into his job. For one thing, Yuvi is a confidence player. When things are going well for him, he is unstoppable as a batsman – and that confidence bordering on arrogance has clearly impacted his captaincy as well. But he is also clearly benefiting from the leadership team around him. Tom Moody, Jayawardene and Sangakkara have already worked well together for Sri Lanka. The three of them are clearly bringing their expertise to bear for Punjab as well, and certainly Mahela and Sanga have been truly valuable players not just for their performance but as leaders and team players – something that cannot be said for too many of the foreign superstars in the tournament, and indeed something that can hardly be said for any of the non-Aussies. Yuvraj is cushioned by them on either side as a batsman and as a captain, and that is helping his cause enormously.

I think it is very likely that these two teams will now go onto the semis, so the real question concerns the remaining two spots. Delhi, with a 4-3 record, is potentially vulnerable, but I think they’re too good a team in terms of quality to implode their way out of the top 4. Delhi certainly has the best balanced team for the requirements of 20/20, with the strongest bowling attack in the tournament backed up by the most in-form top order. Delhi’s weakness is its middle order, good on paper but which has largely failed to come good on the rare occasions that the top order has failed. For me, the real battle is for the 4th spot, with Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata the three contenders for it.

I personally would not write off Chennai, mainly because Dhoni is such a cool customer under pressure and capable of bringing out the best in whatever team he captains. But on paper, you have to say that Mumbai look the stronger team and have the better momentum. Quite simply, Chennai just don’t have the personnel to fill the gaps left by Hayden and Hussey, even if Albie Morkel looks like a useful replacement for Jacob Oram. Given that their side disproportionately depended on batting strength to start with, losing their two best batsmen is going to be a hard blow to recover from in a sustained fashion.

What this means is that Chennai has a weak top order and a relatively weak bowling attack, and those are two key ingredients for 20/20 success. Their bowling depends very much on Makhaya Ntini and Muralitharan, and neither has really come to the party yet. They have been saved so far by Manpreet Gony punching far above his weight, but that lack of depth is going to start hurting them at the business end of things. As for their top order, Parthiv Patel has looked at sea; Stephen Fleming has always been notoriously inconsistent; and Vidyut, while he’s played a couple of good knocks, is no Matthew Hayden. Certainly, if I was a franchise owner for Chennai, I’d be looking to beef up that department next year – possibly considering one of the talented young Sri Lankans, Upul Tharanga or Malinda Warnapura, to add to the roster.

What this means is that there is a huge amount of pressure on their middle order, especially Dhoni and Suresh Raina. Raina has certainly impressed in this tournament, but he has not yet looked the finished product. Especially, his problem has been that he has played many pretty cameos, but hasn’t really developed into the fulcrum around which his team can bat, the way Rohit Sharma, his rival for an India spot, has for Hyderabad. This makes Raina a very good supporting act for a Hayden, but in Hayden’s absence the youngster needs to take on more responsibility.

Having said all of this, Chennai has also been hampered by what I think has been some poor strategy from Dhoni after the departure of his stars. It should have been clear that what Chennai really needed was to replenish their top order. That should have meant, first of all, that Dhoni moved himself up to 3 for the rest of the tournament, instead of playing up and down the order. Dhoni has played some of his best cricket for India in one-dayers at 3, and in this situation, Chennai consistently needs him in the game as early as possible. The second mistake is even more ridiculous, and that is having Subramaniam Badrinath play most of this tournament at no. 7. Badri has been a colossal player for Tamilnadu over the past 3 years, and is someone who has been knocking at the doors of Indian selection for a while now. He is the sort of batsman who can provide the fulcrum around which the team can bat, who can play the role Rohit is playing for Hyderabad or Sanga is playing for Punjab. For him to be languishing down the order like this makes no sense whatsoever. A top 6 of Vidyut, Fleming, Dhoni, Badri, Raina and Morkel, with either Parthiv or Chamara Kapugadera coming in at 7, would be a far better proposition.

Mumbai’s turnaround, meanwhile, is ample empirical evidence of the beneficial effects of not having Harbhajan Singh in the side. Indeed, I would suggest that Mumbai’s man of the series so far has been Sreesanth, who has provided them a huge service by inciting Bhajji into The Slap. Shaun Pollock had an indifferent time as South Africa captain, but he has so far looked an excellent captain for Mumbai – leading with calm, leading by example, and bringing the best out of some of the lesser known players in the side. Even Ashish Nehra, one of the most notoriously temperamental players in the game, has blossomed under Pollock, and is now starting to look like the bowler he looked for India in 2003-04. The top order hasn’t been great, but Jayasuriya is due a big knock, and he will probably be bolstered by Tendulkar’s presence as opening partner for the rest of the tournament.

Kolkata too cannot be written off. Their problem is a seriously ordinary batting line-up – other than David Hussey, there just seems to be no quality there. Ganguly is yet to adjust himself to this format of the game, and Chris Gayle’s absence is really leaving a hole at the top of the order that Kolkata are finding almost as hard to fill as Bangalore. Having good starts is so essential in this format, so unless Salman Butt suddenly discovers his mo-jo, or Akash Chopra discovers aspects to his game that we didn’t know he had, that is going to be a very difficult handicap to overcome. Kolkata’s batting has so far stayed above water because of gutsy performances from the little known local lads, L.R. Shukla, Wriddhiman Saha and Debabrata Das – but none of those have been the sort of match-defining efforts we see from Rajasthan’s local lads.

However, there are three things that keep Kolkata in the hunt. First is their bowling. Their bowling attack is amongst the better ones in the tournament, and even though Murali Kartik hasn’t made much of an impact for the most part, their sub-continental seam attack of Ishant Sharma, Umar Gul, Ajit Agarkar and the extremely impressive Ashok Dinda, now backed up with the possibility of Shoaib Akhtar, is as dangerous as any in the tournament. The second is that Ganguly is one of those people who should never be written off, because he has the hunger and capacity to rise to the challenge. He hasn’t adapted as a batsman to the T20 format yet, but his bowling against Bangalore was exceptional, and he clearly has a point or two to prove about seniors being written off, and his own exclusion from the one-day side. And the third is that Kolkata will get enormous support in their four remaining games at the Eden Gardens, in front of the most parochial and partisan crowd by far in the tournament. That clearly has the ability to lift them, as they showed in their remarkable performance in the field against Bangalore. Whether all of this is going to be enough to nullify their batting weaknesses remains to be seen, but it does mean that only a fool would write them off entirely. If anything, I think that of the three teams I see contesting that fourth spot, Chennai looks the weakest. The start they had when their superstars were around was a big boost, and might be enough to see them through to the last 4. But Mumbai has better balance, and Kolkata has a better attack and more passion. It could well be a Tendulkar v Ganguly battle for that last semi-final spot.

The two teams without a chance anymore are Deccan and Bangalore.

Deccan has certainly performed far below their talent levels. But Rohit Sharma has been an absolute star in the middle order, and Laxman has found his feet at the top of the order as the tournament has progressed, having certainly adapted better to this format than either Dravid or Ganguly. Their bowling isn’t the strongest in the tournament, but R.P. Singh has increasingly found his feet as the games have progressed and he is backed up by some useful customers. I think it is crucial for Chaminda Vaas to get in for the remainder of the tournament – his experience is going to be vital. And of course, Gilchrist at the top of the order is key – when he has fired, Deccan have usually done well, and their problem has been that he hasn’t fired often enough so far.

The people who have really let them down have been their other foreign stars. Herschelle Gibbs has been as poor for them as he has of late for South Africa, and that is an acquisition Deccan might want to reevaluate next year; Shahid Afridi has more or less turned into a specialist bowler; and Scott Styris is yet to produce anything of note. There may well be a case for drafting in the talented Chamara Silva to see what he can do; Rohit could certainly do with the support in the middle order. I would also dearly love to see the talented Ravi Teja get more of a chance ahead of Venugopal Rao (largely out of his depth) and Arjun Yadav (only playing through nepotism, not merit). I don’t think Deccan has any chance of making the semis, but I think they still have the opportunity to salvage some pride. The team I would like to see them put out would be: Gilchrist, Laxman, Teja, Rohit, Chamara Silva, Afridi, Bangar, Vaas, R.P., Ojha and Kalyankrishna.

While Deccan might yet win a few more games, I think it is fair to write Bangalore’s post-mortem. They have, quite simply, been awful, and the two games that they have won have been narrow affairs against other teams who were near the bottom at the time. The general understanding has been that this is because they are a “Test XI”, unsuited to the demands of T20. But I think that is too simple.

What does “Test XI” mean? One of the things that Rahul Dravid has rightly pointed out is that we tend to pigeon-hole people as one thing or another rather than see them for what they are actually capable of doing. He said this with regard to Wasim Jaffer, and indeed, Jaffer did look the part as opener until injury put paid to his tournament. Jaffer’s problem was not that he was too slow – it was that he consistently would throw his wicket away at the wrong time after getting a start, which indeed has been a problem in his Test batting as well over the past few months. In the Test team, though, he has others who can consolidate and pick up the pieces when he gets out; in this Bangalore team, no one has emerged as the fulcrum around which the team can bat. They all have people who can play that role for their countries – Dravid, Kallis, Chanderpaul – but none of them has come to the party here. Their problem isn’t that they have “Test” players – it is that their “Test” players haven’t shown their Test-playing ability, of nurturing a team’s innings around them – something that with more than 25,000 Test runs between them, these three men should have known something about.

The second thing that Dravid said which is spot on is that anyone who is good enough to play Test cricket is good enough to be a T20 player. He has been mocked for saying this, but again, I think he’s right. It is ridiculous to suggest that Kallis is a “Test” player while Sangakkara is a T20 player when in fact both have rather similar approaches to their game. It is just that one has been in form and the other hasn’t – happens all the time in cricket, in any form.

But the thing that is key here is – one has to learn to be a T20 player if you are a Test player. A lot of the successful players in this tournament learnt a lot about playing T20 in the World Cup last year. But Bangalore is full of key batsmen, such as Dravid, Kallis and Jaffer, who just do not have much T20 experience. And they had no time to acquire that experience, having to hit the ground running.

This learning is both individual and team. Dravid’s own experience as a one-day player is instructive in individual learning. Early in his one-day career, he was hopeless. By the 2003 World Cup, he was one of the best one-day players in the world. Sure, he added a few shots to his repertoire, but that wasn’t what caused the transformation. What was responsible for the change was Dravid learning how to read and respond to the tempo of a game that was quite different from the 5-day game. That is what a number of players in this Bangalore side haven’t learnt yet. The way a number of them approached the modest run chase against Kolkata was instructive – so many of them, including hardened limited overs specialists like Mark Boucher, were intent on playing themselves in before taking on the opposition, so that they were just left with too much to do at the fag end of the chase. But T20 doesn’t allow oneself the luxury of playing out your 1st 10 balls for 5 runs – at the very least, you should have made 10-12 runs in that 10 ball period of “settling down”. Trying to slog the first ball you receive out of the ground is not the solution to that either, as Dravid discovered against Rajasthan. T20 batting is about a few basic things – trying to get a boundary as early in an over as possible, rotating strike from the get-go – that are important in one-dayers as well. But in one-dayers, they are important at particular stages of an innings. In T20, they are important all the time. Bangalore’s batting is approaching T20 as if it is a compressed version of a one-day innings, where one goes through all the stages one would in a 50-over innings but more briefly. But in fact, it is an excised version of a 50-over innings, all the boring bits in the middle taken out and only the intense bits left in. The likes of Dravid and Kallis are masters of the boring bits in a 50-over innings – they are very good at settling in and building momentum, and indeed, Dravid can then be as devastating as a Yuvraj or a Dhoni at the end of the innings. What he and his teammates haven’t learnt yet is how to recalibrate the pacing of an innings for this format.

Bangalore has also not learnt to think like a team, and that is very important especially while batting. By this, I mean that it is not just important to pace one’s own innings according to the format – it is also important to pace one’s innings according to one’s partner’s. Graeme Smith has been a master at this, slowing down his tempo and giving up the strike while batting with Asnodkar or Yusuf Pathan, then upping the ante when someone like Mohammad Kaif, who requires a few balls to settle in, comes in to bat. Even more than Test cricket or 50-50, T20 batting is a two-man show.

A way in which Bangalore have not learnt to bat as a team was evident in their run chase against Kolkata. Cameron White and Mark Boucher were batting beautifully together, and White’s run out at the hands of Murali Kartik was a big blow. At this point, Dravid did exactly the right thing, which was to send out Praveen Kumar ahead of Virat Kohli. Kohli was the specialist batsman, but PK has more international experience; he is also someone who can genuinely wallop the ball. He has opened on a number of occasions for UP. Yet, Boucher shielded him from the strike in Ishant’s final over, treating him as if he was a number 11 batsman. This was stupid for a number of reasons. First of all, singles would have reduced the target – 10 off 3 balls is a lot easier to get than 13 off 3. Second, Boucher, in spite of his valiant knock, was not in peak form; he has struggled on a number of occasions to get the ball off the square, and had looked a novice against Ganguly. Third, Boucher by this time was tired – he had played 40 intense deliveries in scorching heat, in addition to running around while White was on strike. Fourth, PK knows Ishant’s bowling a lot better, having hit him in the nets. Earlier in the tournament, Ishant had been hit for 21 by PK’s lower order partner in the Indian line-up, Piyush Chawla. I personally would have backed PK to take Ishant on better than I would have backed Boucher. The way Bangalore played that last over – and here it is Boucher to blame, not Dravid or Prasad or the late lamented Charu Sharma – was reminiscent of Laxman’s decision to give Symonds the crucial last over against Rajasthan – safe thinking, but poor thinking in a T20 context. And those overs have had crucial consequences for the long-term prospects of these teams in the tournament.

Contrast the way Boucher played with PK to the way his South African captain, Smith, plays with Yusuf Pathan. Yusuf is no better a batsman than PK is; his batting average is probably a bit higher, but their domestic batting trajectories are fairly similar, and they both play a similar game, though Yusuf probably has better shot selection. Smith treats Yusuf like a key batsman, drops anchor, gives him license to play his game; Boucher treats PK like a bowler. Yusuf has in the process emerged as a star, while PK has made hardly a dent in the tournament with the bat. Had he consistently been persisted with as opener or no. 3, as Yusuf was, he could have turned into a key all-round performer for Bangalore. In a nutshell, that is why Rajasthan is 6-2 and Bangalore 2-6. It is not because Rajasthan has “T20” players and Bangalore has “Test” players. It is because Rajasthan has built a team culture where everyone is seen as a potentially match-winning contributor, while Bangalore still sees itself as a team of out-of-form superstars trying to support the unknowns. And that’s not a culture that breeds success.

This is not to say that Bangalore has not made strategic mistakes. It has made any number, and three have been devastating. First, they have not settled upon an opening combination in a format where starts are absolutely vital. Second, they have the best T20 batsman in the world in Misbah-ul-Haq in their ranks, and have benched him more often than not (surely he should have been the first name on the team-sheet?). And third, Dravid has moved himself up and down the order like a yo-yo, so that one could profitably start the where-will-Dravid-bat-today sweepstakes. This was a problem when he was India captain as well. Most good captains protect themselves, especially if they are the team’s main batsman. Could we possibly conceive Ricky Ponting moving himself up and down the order, opening one day, batting at 7 the next? But it seems like Dravid almost decides his position on a game-by-game basis by roll of the dice. Exactly the same thing happened in the fateful months that culminated in our inglorious World Cup last year. Here was Dravid, arguably the best no. 5 in the world in 50-50 cricket, batting all over the order. What this meant, for India then and Bangalore now, is that it is a team without foundations, where people in the side don’t know what their roles are. Shane Warne certainly makes bold, even unpredictable moves, but they are moves built on a basic foundation – without that foundation, teams can’t play well together, certainly not teams that have just been together for a few days before the start of a tournament.

So, anyway, those are my picks for now – Punjab as champion, beating Rajasthan / Delhi in the final, with Mumbai sneaking past Kolkata as the fourth semi-finalist.