I've never been wrong about as many things all at once* as I have about the likely outcomes of this week's IPL matches. Seriously, it's been spooky. The unerring ability that I seem to have developed this week to predict the wrong result in cricket matches (not just the IPL; Somerset and Essex were also on the receiving end of my inaccuracy) could have made me a great deal of money if only I'd bet on the complete opposite result to the one that I had thought would happen. I'd be rolling in cash if only I'd realised that I am, in actual fact, a complete idiot and shouldn't be trusted to correctly call the outcome of a match. But, as depressing as it is to consistently be totally wrong about things, it does at least provide interesting material for a blog, and some pretty entertaining cricket while we're at it. And so, because I have accidentally committed to doing so, here's my round-up of the second week of IPL action.
*Coincidentally, I thought I'd get this up yesterday but I was wrong about that too. Someone called a General Election and that put a slight hold on things while I screamed into the darkness.
Delhi Daredevils - W2 L2
After winning one and losing one last week, the Delhi Daredevils have added to their overwhelming averageness by adding one more to each tally. In fact, they've been so average that I think my head actually detatched from my neck out of boredom during their match against the Knight Riders. The most difficult part about writing these round-ups is having to find something interesting to say about the Daredevils each week. Even in the game they won, there was an enormous amount of negativity. Zaheer Khan, the elder statesmen of Indian fast bowlers, had the look of a man who had shat himself to death as he went wicketless at 9.50 per over. In the second game, Angelo Mathews made a complete hash of things in his first appearance with his incredible score of 1 from 4 and his impressive wicket tally of 0. It seems like every game they play, something else goes wrong for Delhi and, even though their win-loss ratio is immeasurably better than that of Gujarat and Bangalore, they are the ones that look as if they're drowning in shite.
Gujarat Lions - W1 L4
Sound the trumpets! Gujarat Lions have won a game! And for the life of me, I can't work out how they did it. Obviously, I know how they did it, with the help of Andrew Tye's magic knuckleballs and the second hattrick of the day (behind Samuel Badree for RCB - honestly, you wait ages for one and then two come along in the same day). But the batting didn't seem that spectacular, even though they made 172, and the rest of the bowling was less than incisive. Brendan McCullum adds something at the top of the order, of course - when you've got the sheer power that he does, it's hard not to make an impact - and yet the batting still seems a little lacklustre. I can't help thinking that this Gujarat side would have been more entertaining to watch - and indeed easier to like - if they had kept losing. But this one win puts them firmly in the 'average' column along with so many other teams, and it just gets a little tricky to keep being enthusiastic about a team like that.
Kings XI Punjab - W2 L3
Kings XI Punjab didn't play cricket against Delhi this week. They played a game that was probably invented by the drunk for the mad. It says so much that their best bowler was Varun Aaron (2/45), so long the bane of RCB fans' lives due to the immense ineptitude of his bowling. Their batting ran the gamut from absent to suicidal, and despite seeing shades of brilliance in their next match against Sunrisers Hyderabad thanks mainly to Manan Vohra's magnificent 95 from 50, even that wasn't enough for them to avoid the loss dealt out to them by Bhuveneshwar Kumar's 5-for. Other than Vohra, no batsman got above 13 in that match, and that appears to be the crux of KXIP's problem - when one fires, no-one else does. It's all very well and good having an opener score 95, but when no-one backs that up with any meaningful contribution, all you're left with is one big innings. They managed to restrict Hyderabad to 159; 159 is an easily gettable score. Kings XI should have won that match, but instead find themselves with a losing record and a batsman who missed out on a ton. And in the match against Kolkata? Their bowlers had the crap beaten out of them by Sunil Narine and Gautam Gambhir, and none of their batsmen got above 30.
Kolkata Knight Riders - W4 L1
I know that there are many facets to the Kolkata Knight Riders this week. I know that they're joint top of the table, I know that they've got the biggest home advantage in the competition, I know that they've got an opening batsman in fantastic form. But the one thing that leaps out at me about KKR this week is the fact that they had Sunil Narine - yes, mystery spinner Sunil Narine - opening the batting. You heard me correctly. Sunil Narine opened the batting for the Knight Riders twice this week, and it worked... once. On both occasions he batted like a man with a pair of jump leads attached to his scrotum, but against KXIP that madcap style of batting resulted in a brisk 37 from 18, with his opening partner Gautam Gambhir bludgeoning 72 from 49 to hold down one end. The experiment worked less well against Sunrisers Hyderabad, where Narine hit 6 from 9 balls, but that was irrelevant as Robin Uthappa, superhero that he is, leapt to the rescue with 68 from 39 which, on top of an all-round bowling performance where every bowler took a wicket except Umesh Yadav, sealed victory for KKR for the second time in the week. The third game featured yet another batting superstar in the form of Manish Pandey (69 from 49) and a three-wicket haul for Nathan Coulter-Nile. The only team that has beaten KKR this year so far is Mumbai Indians, so don't be surprised to see one qualifier played between purple and blue.
Mumbai Indians - W4 L1
During Mumbai's first match this week against Sunrisers Hyderabad, I wrote in my notebook that Kieron Pollard was officially Past It. And I was so looking forward to being able to post that sentiment here, but then he went and scored 70 from 47 balls in a low-scoring thriller against the Royal Challengers and completely shattered any assumption that he was done. Against Hyderabad, Mumbai were an economical, bowling-heavy side, with Jasprit Bumrah and Harbhajan Singh doing the bulk of the damage, taking 3/24 and 2/23 respectively to restrict the Sunrisers to 158/8, which was easily chased down by Parthiv Paten (39), Nitish Rana (45) and Krunal Pandya (37) playing the major roles. Against the Royal Challengers, they retained the economical side of their bowling, conceding only 142 runs (mostly to Kohli) but added a huge-hitting, I'll-kill-you batting dimension to their game thanks to the aforementioned and revitalised Pollard. Then there was a last-over thriller against Gujarat Lions where Rana, Pollard and Rohit Sharma chased down a potentially challenging 176 with three balls to spare. Forgive me - I'd love to make jokes about the Mumbai Indians here as I have most other teams. I'd love to mock and scorn. But I just... can't. They're all playing very well, they're gelling as a team, and contrary to what I said last week, it looks as if we could be seeing the IPL trophy return to the Wankhede this year after all.
Rising Pune Supergiants - W2 L3
When you lose to the Gujarat Lions, you need to rethink a few things. It's not as if the Supergiants played badly - rather, Andrew Tye was very very good - but there are still big names who haven't delivered big performances. Against the Lions, MS Dhoni hit 5 from 8, Ben Stokes didn't breach 30, and Steve Smith - despite recording the highest score of the Supergiants' innings - didn't even get a half-century. Couple that with a shoddy-at-best, useless-at-worst bowling performance featuring such luminaries as Lachlan Ferguson (who?) and World Number One Imran Tahir going at 13.25 an over and what you get is bad value for money. On the surface of it, the batting was equally shite against the Royal Challengers later in the week. I would have expected a team with a bowling attack as soft as RCB to be giving up 190 at Bengaluru. Pune only hit 161 in an innings made up of cameos (Rahane 30, Tripathi 31, Smith 27, Dhoni 28, Tiwary 27). The difference this time was in the bowling. The difference this time was Ben Stokes. 3/18, coupled with another 3/35 from Shardul Thakur, and suddenly they've restricted RCB to 134/9 and they've won their second game of the season. I'm still not convinced that all the money they spent on big names was worth it. But if you get little nuggets of magnificence like we saw from Stokes, maybe it'll all be worth it in the end.
Royal Challengers Bangalore - W2 L4
You can sort of already hear the RCB fans shouting "Net run rate!" - it's surely the only way that they're going to get anywhere near the playoffs at this stage. It's weird; I've never liked a losing team quite as much as I like this Royal Challengers team. I like the fact that they're so top-heavy that they threaten to fall over. I like that, even with the mighty Virat Kohli back, they still find new and inventive ways to lose. For example, even after Samuel Badree took an incredible hattrick against Mumbai, ending with figures of 4/9, they still managed to lose the match, thanks in part to the rest of their bowlers allowing the hitherto out-of-form Keiron Pollard to score 70 but thanks mainly to the glacial pace of their batting, Kohli excluded. Chris Gayle was dropped for the next match against a patchy Supergiants side, and Shane Watson was recalled. He'd have been more useful if he was on fire, scoring 14 from 18 and going at 11 an over with ball in hand. Needless to say, the Challengers lost that match too. And then, in the final match of the week against fellow bottom-dwellers Gujarat Lions, it all seemed to... click. Gayle discovered a rich vein of form to plunge his bat into, plundering 77 from 38. Kohli was slightly more sedate, taking 50 balls to get to his score of 64. In the end, the Challengers posted 213/2. Their bowlers didn't really need to defend that, although a three-wicket haul from Yuzvendra Chahal certainly added bowling sparks to this very batting-heavy side.
Sunrisers Hyderabad - W3 L2
I want to get this out of the way up front. I am a Sunrisers Hyderabad fan, but I like to think that I know where my team is failing. And where it's failing, simply put, is here: Deepak Hooda has all the staying power of Bruce Willis' vest in a Die Hard movie. The Sunrisers have had mixed fortunes this week, losing to a strong Mumbai Indians team on a pitch where no-one scored over 49. Bhuveneshwar Kumar showed glimpses of last season's brilliance, taking 3/21, but he was the only incisive bowler. Mustafizur Rahman, last year's star bowler for Hyderabad, had the shit well and truly kicked out of him by the Mumbai batsmen, going for 12.75 an over and taking no wickets. His first over conceded 19. That isn't to say that the batsmen are completely blameless - ignoring Warner and Dhawan, the Sunrisers batsmen appeared to have the innate cricketing ability of my arse in a helmet. Against Kolkata in a losing effort later in the week, they were similarly hopeless - none of the Sunrisers batsmen scored above 26, and the one saving grace again appeared to be Bhuveneshwar Kumar (spotting a trend here). However, in the game against Kings XI Punjab, they looked... Different. Not necessarily better, but different. Warner hit 70 from 54 - the best batsman by a mile, but still a meaningful score which had otherwise been missing from Hyderabad over the last week - but the real star, the real hero of the day was, once again, Kumar. This time, he wasn't messing around with three-wicket performances. He took 5/19, denying Manan Vohra a century, taking Hashim Amla's wicket in the first ball of the innings, and bowling a fantastic 19th over where he conceded only five runs and took two wickets, all but winning the game for Hyderabad.
Ethan Bale
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