Buzzing Blogosphere – IPL 2016: The Journey Till Now

The vast and diverse country of India agrees over only 1 thing – cricket.The only exception to this rule is IPL, as loyalties of all the cricket crazies of the nation lay with different teams. Once people’s favorite teams take the field, nothing else seems to matter; the glitz, the glamour and controversies take a backseat and those 22 yards take centre stage. The 9th season of IPL has reached a nail biting stage, with Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders leading the pack, and players like Krunal Pandya stirring the pot occasionally. Regardless of whether you are a cricket buff or not, you can’t resist asking ‘Score kya hai?‘ or ‘Kaun jeet raha hai?‘

This season has also seen some fresh champions emerge while some tried and tested veterans battled with their form. Since the game occupies a vast space in our lives, opinions and commentary on this short form of the gentlemen’s game is bound to hit a peak during this time. This week, we find out all that was being talked of about the tournament and hit the rewind button with the help of Indian bloggers who wrote about the games on field and off it.

After a grand opening and colorful pom poms jiggling around in hands of beauties, there is a lot that went in this season’s IPL event. Nevertheless, we saw one of the best plays by our gems. This season saw a shower of accolades on our very own Virat Kohli. Kohli was seen shattering a long list of records this season with his partnership with AB de Villiers. While some even considered him a direct threat to Chris Gayle, this season has been a spectacular success for Mr. Kohli, who’s the Orange Cap holder of the current season.

Sanjeev Singh post shows us the value of having a player like Virat Kohli in your side. Not that we need any convincing after witnessing his stellar form in recent tournaments, but it is a pretty strong case for why we need to add the all rounder player into our new list of top players in cricket.

“Though Dhoni kept making deft fielding changes, they proved ineffective against Kohli’s master act of controlled aggression. Give or take a couple of balls, he was always in total control of the game taking his team to a thrilling win with three balls to spare. His low-key celebration of achieving the three-figure-mark was a shining example of King Kohli enjoying a tough run chase more than reaching personal milestones.”

Gaurav Sethi mentioned ‘Universe Boss’ Chris Gayle, as losing his touch. It seems that the player, who has a reputation for dangerously big shots has disappointed not just his team, but a lot of his fans.

“Yes, that Chris Henry Gayle, now a daddy off the field but no longer on it. Gayle has scored just eight runs in three games. He missed a few because of his baby’s delivery, and then he’s missed a few more because of his own non-delivery.”

On the contrary, the most successful captain in the history of IPL has been targeted for reaching the end of his career. Returning this year with Rising Pune Supergiants, Dhoni’s team looked good at first impression but has failed to sustain success under Captain Cool. This disillusionment has been strongly penned down by Raghav Ravichandran in his recent post.

“He could hide behind the likes of Dwayne Bravo, Suresh Raina or a Ravindra Jadeja in earlier editions of the IPL but sadly in this Pune team he needed to perform and he has failed to do so right through the tournament ( because of lack of experienced batsmen in the middle order for Pune). When his team are struggling in the beginning of an innings it’s a tradition for MSD to come out lower down the order and still orchestrate wins for Chennai but sadly for Pune he is like a trapped animal where his flaws cannot be hidden and has got exposed.”

The season saw a series of close encounters between teams that were closely matched in talent and strategy.. One such battle was the Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Rising Pune Supergiants match on 10th May where the latter lost by a close margin of 5 runs. Kukikol gives a report of the match and what went wrong for the Pune team.

“One would have thought that it would be a cake walk for Dhoni and his men but, that was not to happen. Instead, RPS lost the match by 5 runs even after a splendid performance by Adam Zampa who rattled 6 wickets for just 19 runs.

MS Dhoni tried to do something different and probably that misfired. He changed the entire batting order. There was no need of doing that. Even if RPS wins remaining all matches, the chances of making it to last 4 are very bleak. For them to qualify for the finals, their teams must lose their matches. That is hoping for too much.It is a pity that a good team like RPS has won only 3 out of 10 matches played.”

On the winner’s side, Sunrisers Hyderabad credited its victory to Yuvraj. Henriques in Wisden India‘s post talks about how the game got saved by a player with worthy experience in hand, which he can call forth at the most needed time.

“You can’t buy experience. Tonight, when Yuvi came running in from backward point to run out (Dhoni); an inexperienced player might have just been watching the game and not noticed what was going on,” Henriques, who opened the floodgates for Hyderabad with George Bailey’s wicket in the 12th over, said. “For me, that won us the game; that little play. Otherwise, Dhoni would have been on strike with four to win. He is a masterclass batsman in such situations, but to have a new batsman come in for the last ball was because Yuvi was aware.”

One of this season’s major low point was the number of injuries players across the board sustained, making IPL more of an ‘Injured Premier League’. Prem Prakash lists down the number of benched and otherwise injured players in IPL 9, stating that the Pune team has been the worst hit.

“One of the major highlights, though not on the brighter side, of this edition of the IPL has been the list of injured players. Mitchell Starc was the first big name to be in the injured list with Lendl Simmons and Samuel Badree. The Rising Pune Supergiants could be termed as apparently the most affected side as three of their leading players – Faf du Plessis, Kevin Pietersen and Steve Smith bowed out of the season due to injuries and due to this reason Rising Pune Supergiants almost out from this IPL. Here’s a list of some big players, who ruled out from IPL 2016 due to injury.”

IPL is seen as cricket on steroid, packaged in short bursts of excitement and thrill. But Vishal Pandey feels that this season has been lackluster, owing mostly to the sheer volume of cricket that fans have been exposed to in recent times. The amount of cricket that has been played and watched in the last few months is enough to wear down even the most enthusiastic of fans.

“This year in nearly almost all IPL matches around 10- 15% stadium is remaining empty, now that might not look like an empty stadium but when u compare it to the previous edition of the IPL when almost every match used to be a full house, this is a disturbing trend. And to think that in cricket crazy country like India if you get 15 % empty seats, it does mean that something somewhere is not Right. One of the prime reason is cricketing overdose, with even the cricket T20 World cup held recently that too in India.”

On the other hand, he also talks about some of the amazing moments we had this season that made all the cricket watching worthwhile.

“After a poor start by Bangalore, where Gayle got out for just 6 runs in the 4th over, AB De Villiers joined Kohli in the middle and from there the ABD & Kohli show started, ABD smashed 12 maximum and 10 4’s in his innings of 129 runs of just 52 balls, He started right from the word go and there was no stopping him after that as he got to his ton in just 43 balls, last 50 of which came in just 18 balls. Kohli was playing the second fiddle in the partnership until the 18th over , when he was on 65 from there he went into a rampage mode thrashing the young and helpless Kaushik for 30 runs in the 19th over, he brought up his hundred in the final over as he smacked Praveen Kumar for a huge six.”

We’re not yet finished with this season and there are many more thrilling episodes to come, while the journey till now has also been been full of spicy moments. We have our own set of expectations from Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad. At the same time, we’re not denying the possibility of an upset, which is the beauty of this game. We look forward to watching many more nail biting thrillers in this season of IPL.

In all the excitement and anticipation, we must take a minute to remember one of the gems that the world of cricket lost – Tony Cozier. We leave you with this beautiful note written for the legend in the world of commentators by Jaideep Ghosh agreeing that his place is irreplaceable in the cricket industry.

“I came across Cozier off and on during that trip, and on occasion later too. There was always a wave and a wink and a wisecrack. So when I heard of good old Tony waving goodbye for the last time, I thought it would be fair to honour him with a wave back as he leaves, and a smile for adding flair to the game of cricket. So long, Tony Cozier. The game was richer through your life.”