Suneer Chowdhary
( Cricket Writer)
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If you would have told any fan or expert alike, 46 days ago, that Rajasthan Royals would go on to lift the trophy in the first season of the DLF IPL, they would have laughed you off as a madcap. Unfortunately – or fortunately, whichever way you look at it – cricket is a sport which can just bite you in your bum when you think you got it by the scruff of its neck. And that was precisely what one witnessed through the duration of this tournament- amazing cricketing performances by the Royals that culminated yesterday in the lifting of the glittering IPL trophy for this season.

The final could have only been scripted slightly better; a bowl-out may just have been at par for the course. Yet, the match went down to the wire and had enough twists and turns to give the average fan, cold hands.

It would be fair to say that it was the team that kept their nerves at crucial junctures won the game yesterday. And this included all the three disciplines, batting, bowling and fielding. For starters, the Super Kings should have achieved a total in the vicinity of 180, after the kind of start they got, but fell about 15 runs short. In hindsight, Dhoni may have erred in having Chamara Kapugedera above the Badrinaths and the Gonys of the team. Suresh Raina departed at the wrong time, as did his partner Albie Morkel, providing Warne’s bowlers many chances to erode a potentially big score.

At the score of 40 odd for the loss of three men, the Royals may have been gasping, but at no point could the Super King’s bowler apply enough pressure to push the asking rate above ten. Muralitharan, normally known to bowl economical spells, gave away loads, including a couple of sixes in an over, which almost tilted the match in the opponents’ favour. Yusuf Pathan was a nervous starter, and he was dropped twice, before he saw his team through. In the end, the Royals did give the Super Kings a chance to get back into the match, with three quick wickets, but Ntini had runs taken off the penultimate over to leave them defending only eight off the last six deliveries. Again, a fumble by wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel meant that the Royals did not have to scrape too hard off the last delivery resulting in the Royals lifting the first IPL trophy.

M.S. Dhoni’s graciousness in defeat, when he called his team together in a huddle and made it clear that he was proud of the way each one of them performed, despite losing the final, was a great gesture. Whether one calls him the captain with the Midas touch or a shrewd and tactical man, Dhoni seems to treat both, success and failure with equal aplomb. And that augurs really well for Team India in the long run.

With this, the action now shifts to international cricket, with India, Pakistan and Bangladesh being involved in a tri-series, to be followed by the Asia Cup. I already feel a vacuum to turn on the television set in the evening and not have a match going on!