IPL 11, for all the hype it had created before the beginning of the tournament, had lived up big time, to the expectation of its fans. With almost every match of the competition, going on till the last over, the first week of the competition has only given a preview of the things to come for the next 5 weeks in this fabulous beginning of the next decade of IPL. While, we cricket fans have soaked in the excitement and drama that the eight teams have offered in the first week of IPL 11, let us take a look at where the good old eight teams of IPL stand after the first week.
Though its early days in the league, we will review the performance of the teams in IPL in order of where they are positioned on the league table presently (before Match 12), starting from the bottom.
Mumbai Indians (MI) [P-3 W-0 L-3]
They are perhaps one team, who are used to sitting at the bottom of the table after the first week of the tournament. In the 2015 IPL season, MI lost 4 consecutive matches to begin their campaign, before going on a winning spree to ultimately emerge as champions of the season. So, it may apparently seem, that there is nothing to worry about for the MI fans. However, if we dig a bit deeper into the performance of MI after the first week, there are indeed causes of worry, this time around for MI. The biggest issue for MI, this time around, is that even after 3 matches of the tournament, the core team of MI (Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Krunal Pandya and Kieron Pollard) is yet to perform. There has been inspiring performances from domestic uncapped Indian recruits, like Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Mayank Markande etc as well as from new foreign recruits, like Evin Lewis, Mustafizur etc- But if there is one reason why MI have lost 3 close matches of the penultimate/final ball of the match, it is the fact that the big guns are not performing. If you look at the performance of MI in the 2015 edition, where they came back from being 0-4 down to becoming champions, in the first 4 matches of that season (even though MI lost), there was a brilliant 98 from Rohit Sharma at Eden Gardens, a 70 odd Innings from Pollard against RR, a couple of useful half centuries from Corey Anderson. So, though the team was on a losing streak in that season, the big guns were firing, here and there and hence, after losing the first 4 matches, they were able to turn the tide in their favour.
So, MI has indeed reasons to worry about, as they head into the second week of the tournament. However, that being said, all the core members of the team, Rohit, Bumrah, the Pandya Brothers and Pollard are class players and I believe they will turn it around for MI with match winning performances, in the coming week.
Delhi Daredevils (DD) [P-3 W-1 L-2]
DD is a team, which has gone through multiple revamps, in the first 10 editions of IPL, but is yet to find the ideal combination to win the coveted trophy. This year after the auctions, they looked the best team, on paper, with an allround bowling attack and a young Indian middle order with explosive overseas players, capped off with an experienced captain. Despite that, after the first week of the tournament, it seems , DD is continuing their jinxed campaign from the last decade of IPL. The loss of Kagiso Rabada has only added to the woes of the pace bowling attack, which is presently lead by the ever-so-ineffective-on -Indian-pitches Trent Boult. Gautam Gambhir, is clearly missing Sunil Narine, from his KKR days, as Rahul Tewatia, Amit Mishra and Shahbaz Nadeem are not even coming close, to applying a choke hold on the opposition batting in the middle overs. After losing 2 consecutive matches to begin their campaign, DD has won the 3rd game against MI, on the back of a stupendous performance from the English Opener, Jason Roy. For the time being the fragile middle order may hide behind the exploits of Roy, but in future matches to come, the likes of Pant, Iyer, Maxwell, need to play the long innings, if DD has to move beyond the group stages of the tournament.
The ray of hope for Delhi, is the fact that they are led by a captain, who can boast of 2 IPL trophies in his cabinet and hence knows what it takes to cross the finishing line. Heading into the second week of the tournament, DD has got work to do, as they find themselves languishing at the second last position after the first week of the tournament.
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) [P-3 W-1 L-2]
RCB is touted as the South Africa of IPL cricket, for quite some time now. Every season, you think, this season, they have the players to win the championship and somehow, during the business end of the tournament, they fall apart. This season, a lot of experts believed, RCB will take this season of IPL by storm, especially with the stalwarts in their bowling attack, this year. Then they were hit by a significant injury to the leader of their bowling attack, Nathan Coulter Nile- and suddenly RCB bowling looked toothless. Chris Woakes, not learning from his last year IPL experience, kept on bowling the three quarter length balls on flat Indian pitches and got carted away for runs, Yuzi Chahal & Washington Sundar, after a few initial blips in the first 2 matches are bowling well & Umesh Yadav is providing the much needed X factor to the bowling line up with his express pace. But, age old issues of RCB with death bowling are surfacing once again as they are conceding way too many runs in the last 5 overs.
On the batting front, they boast of the most intimidating top 4 in the game, with Mccullum, De Kock, Virat & AB. RCB traditionally has been a top heavy batting side, but where they look to be different this time around is the Big Top 4 are backed up by the likes of Mandeep Singh, Pawan Negi and Chris Woakes, who are giving the decent finishes after the starts provided by the top order. Indeed, they have won only 1 game in the first week of the tournament, but there has been some good innings from AB, Virat, Mccullum accompanied by inspired bowling bowling performances from Umesh, Washington & Chahal. That being said, if RCB are not able to solve their death bowling woes, going further into the competition, it will be very tough for them to proceed to the playoffs.
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) [P-3 W-1 L-2]
If there was one team, who faced outright criticism, from every cricket expert, right from the days of the auction, it was KKR. They decided to go in with a small squad of 19 players, which meant they were short on backups. They decided to go for a captain, who has not been tested on the international platform or in IPL, with his leadership skills. With an unconventional approach towards team building, it was a giveaway, that it will either be a hit or a miss season for KKR. 1 week into the tournament, unfortunately, it seems to be the later. To begin with, KKR lost its only express pace bowler, Mitchell Starc, to injury before the beginning of the season. That only meant, that suddenly the responsibility of leading the attack was bestowed upon Mitchell Johnson, who has last played international cricket, a couple of years ago. If that was not enough, DK was clearly seen fumbling with his leadership skills. Right from using an aged Vinay Kumar (having a superb Ranji Season is different from bowling in front of packed crowds in IPL) to bowl the last over against CSK, to bringing in Sunil Narine to bat outside the powerplay overs, KKR's campaign, thus far has been filled with captaincy blunders.
Add to that, the inability of both the captain and the vice captain to play impact innings, yet in the tournament, KKR is looking in troubled waters already, The only match, they won against RCB was because of a quickfire 50 from Narine accompanied by a gamble of bowling Nitish Rana, coming off big time. The couple of bright spots however, in KKR's campaign is the allround form of Andre Russell and the mystery bowling skills skills returning to the ever so trusted warrior of KKR, Sunil Narine. These 2 bright spots are definitely not enough if KKR has to make their way into the playoffs. Standing at the end of Week 1, the chances of them going through looks extremely bleak, especially because DK has not lived up to the leadership expectation, the franchise had had from him.
Rajasthan Royals (RR) [P-3 W-2 L-1]
Rajasthan Royals faced the biggest blow before the tournament, as they lost their captain Steve Smith to the ball tampering saga. Luckily, they had an able leader, in the form of Rahane, who could take on the leadership mantle in the absence of Smith. RR went firing all cylinders in the auction, pocketing some of the most expensive buys, in the form of Ben Stokes. Jaydev Unadkat, Jofra Archer and Sanju Samson. The expensive buys for the Royals, have had a slow start to the tournament to be honest. Stokes, inspite of his experience of playing the last IPL on Indian pitches, is yet to deliver a decent performance, with either bat or ball. Unadkat is looking a pale shadow of the bowler, he was for RPS, last season, as he has picked only 2 wickets from his 3 matches, conceding runs at 10 per over. Jofra Archer, has been sidelined due to injury unfortunately.
Royals, though have quite a few bright performances to show for already in the first week of IPL. After being criticized for not converting his starts to big innings, in the first 2 matches, Sanju Samson, blistered his way to a 92 run innings against RCB, to take his team home in third match of the season for RR. The captain has given decent starts to the team in the last couple of matches from the top of the order. Ben Laughlin along with the uncapped allrounder Shreyas Gopal is leading the bowling attack, picking up wickets and giving away runs at 6-7 runs per over. The only thing, RR will be praying for , leading into the second week of the tournament, is for their overseas batsmen (Stokes, Butler, D'Arcy Short) to fire big time. Otherwise, the batting order will get over dependent on Rahane & Samson and that will only pull back RR from proceeding into the business ends of the tournament in their comeback season.
Chennai Super Kings (CSK) [P-3 W-2 L-1]
I am sure, somewhere in the team management of CSK, there is an Engineer, who in his student days, studied for 2 nights before the semester and efficiently scored a CGPA of above 9 regularly, every semester. CSK, has been part of absolute jailbreak wins in the first 2 matches of the tournament. They were set to repeat the same against KXIP in their 3rd match, only to be denied victory by 4 runs unfortunately due to the sore back of the captain. What CSK has done so far in the competition, is let the match float away from them till the 12th over of the second innings and then suddenly, a finisher has emerged who started connecting balls out of the middle and sending perfect yorkers to sixes. CSK has thus far, not only snatched victories, from the jaws of defeat, but what they have also done can be exemplified by a simple statistic. In the 3 matches CSK has played thus far, they have scored at around 12 runs per over in the final 8 overs i.e. on an average, they have scored around 100 runs in the last 8 overs every match. A very bright side, of these apparently prison break wins, is a new finisher has emerged every match for CSK, in the form of Bravo, Billings or MSD himself and thus 3 matches into the tournament, CSK is looking at a side with 3 batsmen, each with a match winning performance under his belt.
The chink in the armour for CSK however, is their bowling. Deepak Chahar is doing a good job in the powerplay overs, but as expected is succumbing to pressure due to lack of experience. Shardul Thakur, is making it clearer with every passing match, that he is not a powerplay bowler, rather a middle over and slog over pacer, with his knuckle balls and off cutters. Dwayne Bravo and Shane Watson are doing decent jobs with the ball in the middle overs and death respectively. The issue for CSK, is thus the spin department, which was ironically touted to be CSK's strength before the beginning of the tournament. Harbhajan, Jadeja, Tahir has been conceding truckloads of runs and that is making life difficult for the CSK batting unit.
Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) [P-3 W-2 L-1]
When Shane Warne led the Rajasthan Royals to victory, in the inaugural season of the IPL in 2008, I remember, several Australians coming up openly and proclaiming "Shane Warne was the best captain, Australia never had." I wonder, if the same statement will be applied for Ravichandran Ashwin in the Indian context of things. Ashwin has been nothing short of fabulous in his stint as captain of KXIP in the first 3 matches. His inspired bowling changes, field settings combined with his control over the team is something an international captain dreams of achieving. IPL 11 is showing us that Ravi Ashwin has taken to the mantle of captaincy, as fish to water. The KXIP head coach Sehwag, has identified the born leader in Ashwin, and that is doing wonders for the Punjab based franchise this season.
In the first week of the tournament, despite the inspired leadership, a few weak points are becoming evident. The first weakness is the ill form of Yuvraj, Finch and Mayank Agarwal, which is making the middle order fragile, putting pressure on the lower middle order, to finish the innings with a flurry. The second issue, which is more serious, is that the lead pacer of the team Andrew Tye is looking out of sorts and is getting bashed around the park, both in powerplay and in middle overs. KXIP, after the first week, is looking good to proceed beyond the group stages of the tournament, but for that to happen, Andrew Tye needs to play a significant role for them in the coming weeks of the tournament.
Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) [P-3 W-3 L-0]
A team, which dominated the first week of the tournament out & out. Be it batting, bowling or fielding, SRH has set IPL 11 on fire from the first week itself. Under the calm leadership of Williamson, they have left the hangover of the Warner saga behind them and are looking set to be one of the strongest contenders for this year's IPL title. In the auction, SRH not only retained their core team, but also ensured that they fixed the chinks in their middle order from last year. Thus the flurry of Dhawan at the opening spot is accompanied this year by Williamson, Manish Pandey, Shakib, Yusuf Pathan and Deepak Hooda in the middle order, which has only sent tremors down the spine of the opposition in the first week of the tournament. The bowling looks up & running with Billy Stanlake, Bhuvaneshwar Kumar and Siddharth Kaul comprising the pace battery. Oh! Did I Mention the ever so impressive 19 year old leg spinner called Rashid Khan combined with Shakib to lead the spin department? SRH is looking a team from a different planet, with their exceptional skills on the field and what is of more importance, is the fact that, every member of the team has contributed to the win, in either of the 3 matches be it Dhawan, Bhuvi, Kaul, Rashid Khan, Shakib or Hooda.
It is very difficult to find out a weakness in the SRH squad after the first week, but if there is one thing that Williamson will wish for going into the second week of the tournament, it will be for Manish Pandey to produce a match winning performance.
Conclusion
The first week of the tournament is over and it has produced some very closely contested matches. Let us hope that the teams languishing at the bottom will improve their performances in the upcoming weeks and topple the teams who are comfortably seated at the top, thus producing one hell of a tournament, this season.
Comments
Post a Comment