A good start to the Extravaganza called IPL.

What a day of cricket it has been? IPL really has changed the cricket otherwise who would have expected to see two great cricketing brains (Shilpa Shetty and Mandira Bedi (Pun intended!)) analyzing the performance of the likes of Dravid and Warne? After India's and Pakistan's first round exit at the last world cup anything is believable but then certainly nobody would have believed that Rajasthan Royals would be routed for the lowest total ever in the IPL and that too by Royal Challengers who finished just before the last team in the previous edition.

I am sure that the organizers would gloat about the presence of Hollywood stars as well but then, this was the day of extra-ordinary cricket by the two teams, who were at the fifth and seventh position last year. And man! What else could be better for a fan of classic test cricket than to watch Rahul Dravid hitting one of the biggest sixes of the match? Nothing could delight me more than watching a retired cricketer like Anil Kumble taking five wickets in four overs. Nothing could be more beautiful than watching a vintage Shane Warne still moving the ball at his will. Still capable of drawing the batsmen forward into the drive and then turning the ball to clip the top of the leg stump. It’s really an eye candy to watch Shane chit chatting with the likes of Praveen Kumar and then our ‘desi’ boy clubbing him over the top for a six. The format might have changed but then the spirit has not and that’s really good for the cricket.

It was a really incredible day for Indian cricket and well this is something for which IPL can take credit. I mean! this is a format, where you can see a certainly young Dhoni, taking on a vintage Tendulkar and then you wonder why Tendulkar refused captaincy or have decided to opt out of the national team in this shorter version of the game? Well, half into the second match of the season and you watch Rahul Dravid clubbing a slower ball from Munaf Patel and sending it deep down the deep midwicket boundary. You wonder that is this the same guy who was sent packing out of the one day squad last year? Or is this the same old fox ‘Kumble’ who hanged his boots last year? But then at the same time some body might be thinking that have they made a bad choice in the form of South Africa as the venue?

The ball does move here a bit.

This is a country where the ball does its own thing and it seems that a score of 170 – 180 could easily be the winning score. The boundaries are big and the crowd is and will be more interested in the ‘beer’ than watching the action in the middle. The conditions will be windy and younger players will be more likely to fail than their experienced counterparts. The bowlers will be no more at the mercy of the power hitters and well the way Praveen Kumar was moving the ball around both sides of the wicket must have delighted the likes of Irfan Pathan Zaheer Khan and Nathan Bracken. At the same time this also must have sowed the seeds of doubt in the minds of some big hitters of the game. Well, as the tournament will progress the pitches will suffer wear and tear and hopefully will become more flat but by that time it seems only the best will survive.

Moving the venue to South Africa seems to be good for the bowlers but then ‘twenty twenty’ is called slam bang cricket and my doubt is that it stands to loose a part of the audience it has attracted in the last season. So, we might see moves like removing the cap of 4 foreign players in the playing 11. It might be relaxed to five or even can go up-to six because you don’t expect some of the inexperienced domestic players to make an impact like they made last year.

Anyways, the first two matches were really a treat to watch. It was really delightful to watch the legends like Kumble, Sachin and Dravid rising up to the challenge and proving that ‘class’ is ‘the class’ and will always be the ‘class’. Though it’s too early in the tournament to predict the end but then be ready to see some spectacular performances from the oldies. Who were all written off by the critics not much ago.

Image courtesy this blogger.