IPL6: Opening Shots

The IPL madness has begun. All the teams have played their opening encounters and some initial trends have begun to emerge (Now I am sounding like those election time psephologists :P). Presenting the opening shots after the first week of matches.

One of the joys of IPL is watching the recently and soon-to-be-retired stars in action. The highest wicket taker bowling to the two highest run-scorers provided one such instance. As were opening over blitz by Gilchrist and Dravid's opening game performance.

Have seriously begun to wonder about the Mumbai Indians' strategy. Now that they have got Ponting and have appointed him captain, they have to play him in every game thus also occupying a foreign player slot.  There are other questions as well.Why are they wasting Pollard by playing him so low? Why only one game for Jasprit Bumrah after a good opening performance? Why no Maxwell thus far? And is the Tendulkar-Ponting opening partnership worth any more than nostalgia value? In fact the earlier these two get out the better it seems for the teams' prospects.

Some of the Million dollar babies have seemingly gone into hiding. There has been no sign thus far of this year's big purchases - Glen Maxwell (MI), Chris Morris (CSK), Sachitra Senanayake (KKR), Kane Richardson (PWI)? Where is the 1.6 million dollar retention Saurabh Tiwary? Why do the teams make such big purchases and do not even play them?

Pune & Delhi have had bad starts while Rajasthan have been to their usual good start. But its a long tournament. And many, many more games still to be played. So not much needs to be read into this.

It was interesting to see Rajasthan Royals play 5 seamers in their home encounter. And the strategy worked to perfection. Although there was a minor issue of Dravid getting fined for the slow over rate.

There was one Super Over played. It may add to the drama but otherwise is it of no real use. Whats wrong with having a tied game in the League stage? Teams do split points when some games are abandoned due to rains so why not in case of tied games as well.

Every IPL has a tendency of throwing up an unknown name as a star for a day. Kamran Khan, Paul Valthaty, Manish Pandey immediately come to mind. And continuing this trend is Jasprit Bumrah. 3 wickets in the opening game followed by getting dropped for the next two games.

And off-the-field Dhoni has been trolling Sir Jadeja on twitter. Far better than the other non-cricketing controversies which had been going on thus far.

Now to sit back and enjoy the further episodes of the best show on prime-time TV.