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Deccan Chargers

A euphoric moment from last year•Associated Press

They tried to fly like Superman but crash-landed in the first season. They returned for the second edition as Clark Kent and won the tournament. On the cusp of what could be an interesting third season, the question arises: Will the real Deccan Chargers please stand up?After the overconfidence of the first year, they realised the importance of the local Indian players doing well and the leadership of Darren Lehmann and Adam Gilchrist ensured that that objective was met in style. The likes of Rohit Sharma, Venugopal Rao and T Suman formed the core of the middle order and offered tremendous value as spinners. And they can continue to depend on Pragyan Ojha, who shone in the last edition with his control and discipline. Even the younger Indian players like Monish Mishra and Rahul Sharma have impressed Gilchrist.In fact the Indian players are not the problem areas this year; the season hinges on the performance of the foreign players and their ability to adapt to Indian conditions. Can Herschelle Gibbs get back into form? Will Gilchrist himself, being out of cricket for long, have any problem getting into the groove? What is Andrew Symonds’ state of mind? If all the above are positive, Deccan have Mitchell Marsh, Ryan Harris, Dwayne Smith, and Kemar Roach who can turn out to be key performers.

The buzz

The main buzz revolved around the games being taken away from the home venue Hyderabad following sporadic violence surrounding the separatist Telangana movement. It may not, however, be a bad thing for the home team – they have not won a single match in the IPL or Champions League on home turf (last year’s games were in South Africa).

New faces

Deccan have signed up the upcoming talented batsman Mitchell Marsh, younger brother of Australian opener Shaun, and Kemar Roach as a replacement for fellow West Indian fast bowler Fidel Edwards. Roach impressed the world with his performances in Australia, particularly in his duel with Ricky Ponting. He has the pace of Edwards without the latter’s erratic streak. Marsh is an interesting pick and he could very well take Gibbs’ spot if the latter continues to not perform.

Watch out for

Andrew Symonds. The world knows what he can do on a cricket field even if at times he forgets it himself. In Indian conditions, he can be a real powerhouse with his off spin or medium pace and with his explosive batting and fielding. The IPL is the only arena where much of the cricketing world will get to see him perform and it should make for a fascinating viewing experience.

Missing in action

Edwards, who sparkled in the early rounds of last year’s tournament, is the only big casualty but he has been replaced by the talented Roach.

Strength

Their batting is stronger than the bowling and can be potentially very explosive with the presence of Gilchrist, Symonds, Rohit Sharma and Smith.

Weakness

The bowlers. RP Singh, who was the purple-cap holder last year with 23 wickets, usually struggles in Indian conditions. It has to be seen how Harris and Roach adapt to the conditions. And perhaps there is too much of a burden on the irregular spinners Rohit and Rao. Only time will tell.

X-Factor

Mitchell Marsh. He is a powerful batsman who has captained the Australian Under-19 team to the World Cup triumph recently. Gilchrist rates him highly and it won’t be surprising if he replaces Gibbs straightaway.

IPL 2009 – The key figures

Final position: Winners
Top scorer: Gilchrist with 495 runs at 30.93
Top wicket-taker: RP Singh with 23 wickets at 18.13 and economy-rate of 6.50
Best result: The crushing eight-wicket win over Kolkata Knight Riders was the best though the crushing six-wicket win over Delhi in the semi-final will be more memorable for the brutal innings by Gilchrist. Worst result: 78-run loss to Chennai Super Kings
Highest team score: 184 for 6 v Bangalore
Lowest team score: 100 v Chennai

Prediction for 2010

They should make the semi-finals

Scorecard
It was another team effort from Afghanistan as they picked up their first win of the tournament, beating Canada by five wickets. It was still anybody’s game when Afghanistan needed 36 off the final four overs, before Mohammad Nabi’s cameo at No. 6 took them to the brink of victory, and a cool Samiullah Shenwari finished the job with a ball to spare.Choosing to bat, Canada were propped up by a third-wicket stand of 63 between Abdool Samad and wicketkeeper-captain Ashish Bagai. Bagai went on to score 53 off 42 balls, hitting seven fours, as Canada finished on a disappointing total, given the recent high scores at the SSC.Openers Karim Sadiq and Noor Ali, making his debut, ensured Afghanistan made a bright start, putting on 66 by the 10th over. But Canada fought back to take three wickets in three overs to reduce to Afghanistan to 105 for 4 in the 16th over. But three fours in Nabi’s 12-ball 23 tilted the balance and it was left to captain Nowroz Mangal and Shenwari to see them home in a tight finish.

Pakistan will hope to pick up the pieces from the traumatic Sydney defeat as they build-up to what will now be a dead rubber at Hobart, where the best they can do is avoid a fourth successive whitewash at the hands of Australia.The squad has taken the 36-run loss hard and Mohammad Yousuf, the captain, has been trying since to lift the side for the final Test, which begins on January 14. “The team was very, very disappointed after Sydney,” Yousuf told Cricinfo.”But as I told them after the Melbourne loss, we have to see that we continue to play good cricket. We could and should have won at Sydney but we didn’t. Few people thought that we could match Australia before we came on this tour, but we played very well here for three days and had one very poor day.”The comments would seem to reinforce what has been the main criticism of Pakistan on this tour; that the side hasn’t believed at any point they could challenge and topple Australia. The opening days of the Boxing Day Test and the last at the SCG were particularly illuminating, when Pakistan veered between timidity and blind panic.Reaction in Pakistan has been predictably harsh, which also reveals how eagerly this series was being followed. Jamshed Dasti, head of the national assembly’s committee on sports, has been at the forefront of the backlash, asking with force once again for the ouster of the PCB chief Ijaz Butt. This time there might be enough momentum building for it to result in something.A number of ex-players, as expected, have not held back, asking for the heads of Yousuf, coach Intikhab Alam, the selection committee and a number of other players. “I think we can expect the criticism,” Yousuf said. “I’m not saying don’t criticise us but maybe it should be more constructive and it should also highlight the positives that have come out from the Test series as a whole.”Changes are expected in the Test side for Hobart and one is guaranteed. In an unusual move indicative of just how seriously they are viewing the loss, the PCB has issued a release stating that Sarfraz Ahmed is not only flying out to Australia, he will also be keeping wickets in the third Test ahead of Kamran Akmal.The positions of Faisal Iqbal and Misbah-ul-Haq will also come under intense scrutiny; they have one fifty between them in four innings here. However, the paucity of Pakistan’s batting resources is such that they will most likely be replaced by Khurram Manzoor and Shoaib Malik, both of whom were dropped halfway through the New Zealand tour. Questions will be asked about why Fawad Alam was so hastily sent back and not tried after one Test failure in New Zealand; that came two Tests after a debut hundred as an opener, a position he had never played in before.”We have to look at the positives as we get ready for Hobart,” Yousuf said. “Nobody can say whether we will win or lose but we just have to play good cricket for the entire duration. We had our moments in the first Test, where we fought hard. We did well for three days in Sydney. I think the positives are that we know we can compete with any side in the world.”We now need to learn from our mistakes because if we do then we can beat any side out there.”

MS Dhoni’s first major announcement on return to the captaincy was that India were not considering any sweeping changes and that the intent was to finish Sri Lanka off 4-1. Since Dhoni took over the captaincy India have played four dead rubbers and lost all four, and he stated his intention of finishing the contest with a win.”There would not be too much of experimentation with the side,” said Dhoni at the Feroz Shah Kotla, the venue for the final match. “Of course one or two players might be changed but we will go into the match with a strong team. We have won the series but 4-1 always looks better.”Dhoni missed the last two one-day internationals, which India won to take an unassailable series lead, owing to a two-match ban over slow over-rates. The team were without his leadership and weight of ODI runs, but staved off Sri Lanka commendably.”I think everything went perfect,” was Dhoni’s assessment of Cuttack and Kolkata. “We got the wickets when we needed them and had partnerships when we required. We did drop a few catches but [the] fielding still looked better than the first two matches, [the] intensity was there and I think overall everything went fine.”The ground fielding showed a marked improvement in Kolkata, especially during the first hour of play, but two catches allowed Upul Tharanga to score a century and Kumar Sangakkara, dropped on 0, a solid 60. “Fielding is something that cannot improve overnight or in a week’s time,” said Dhoni. “We have to work on our basics and then it would start improving, gradually. We dropped catches in the Twenty20 matches and in this series also. It’s important not to spill chances and I can already see slight improvements.”His stand-in, Virender Sehwag, came in for appreciation. “I’m not going to give him marks, that’s your job. But he has done a great job, won both matches and we are now playing the last match without any pressure,” said Dhoni.

Quarter-final line-up

• Haryana (from Plate league) v Mumbai (defending champions)

• Delhi v Tamil Nadu (Group A toppers)

• Karnataka (Group B toppers) v Punjab

• Assam (from Plate League) v Uttar Pradesh (last season runners-up)

• Relegated teams: Hyderabad, Maharashtra

Karnataka and Tamil Nadu won’t gain any advantage from topping their Ranji groups this season. Even though they are the leaders of their groups by a fair distance, it’s Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh, the finalists from last season, who will get the easier quarter-final opponents – the teams from the Plate League. While Karnataka are not impressed with what seems to be a new rule, Tamil Nadu sort of saw it coming, because that’s how the Ranji Trophy worked in the 1990s, before the Elite League and Plate League – and hence clear-cut semi-finalists – were introduced.Last season, when the system of promoting two Plate teams to the quarterfinals was introduced, the two Super group leaders got to play them, and as expected made it to the semi-finals. This year, Karnataka with a whopping 28 points from six games, and Tamil Nadu with 26 from seven would have also expected easy quarterfinals, but they will be facing Punjab and Delhi respectively. On the other hand, UP and Mumbai, who finished second and third respectively in their groups, get the simpler matches against Assam and Haryana.”It’s quite unfair to give the advantage to them [the finalists from the last season],” Robin Uthappa, Karnataka’s captain, told Cricinfo. “It’s unfair on teams who have done really well this season. We could have finished second or third and could have still played Punjab, who we are playing anyway. That beats the whole purpose, all the hard work that goes in topping a table.”WV Raman, Tamil Nadu’s coach, though, “distinctly remembered the system from earlier years” and was waiting for the confirmation, which – as with most of us – reached his team on the last day of the league stages. “The last year when the format changed, group-toppers got to play Plate teams. But this system was there [in the nineties] that when winners or runner-ups qualified in the next year, even though they didn’t top the group they would automatically become No. 1 and No. 2 [for the purposes of deciding who will play whom in the knockouts].”What Raman alluded to was the time when the league matches were played on a zonal basis. Three teams from each of the five zones qualified to play a Super League in three groups of five. The top two teams from each group would qualify for the next round, but two of those six would get byes and the other four would play quarter-finals to join the top two in the semis. The teams getting the bye were the finalists from the previous year, and if those finalists didn’t make it past the Super League, teams with most points would go straight to semi-finals. For example, in 1999-2000, Karnataka, who finished sixth in terms of points in the Super League, got the bye because they were the defending champions. Madhya Pradesh, who lost the final in 1998-99, didn’t make it to the Super League.Hence Raman and Tamil Nadu were not surprised when they were told they would be playing Delhi and not Assam in the quarter-finals this year.When asked if he, like Uthappa, thought it was unfair to reward teams for previous season’s form and deny the best teams of the on-going season, Raman said, “If that is the rule, what can you do? I wasn’t surprised, but we were just waiting for the information to come.”

Sreesanth took a career-reviving five-wicket haul•Associated Press

It’s been a great week for fast bowlers making a comeback to Test cricket. After a high-quality display from Mohammad Asif and Shane Bond in Dunedin, it was the turn of Sreesanth, playing his first Test in 18 months, to slice through Sri Lanka in Kanpur and put India on course for a 1-0 series lead.Sreesanth’s inclusion in the Test squad had raised eyebrows, and he himself had doubted whether he would return after an injury-filled year. “To be honest, I never thought I will play for the country again,” he said, after picking up his second test five-wicket haul. “But God has been very kind and I got the opportunity at the right time.”All the talk until Thursday morning had been about the flatness of the Green Park track, but Sreesanth inspired India to take 13 wickets in the day to leave Sri Lanka trailing by 356 runs with six second-innings wickets remaining. “It was a slow track and I had to work hard. Hitting the stumps was more important. I told myself that I might go for runs but I will make them play every ball.”Sreesanth finished with 5 for 75, including the prize scalp of Kumar Sangakkara, but he said the wicket of tailender Rangana Herath gave him the most satisfaction. After taking four wickets, Sreesanth had Herath feeling for the ball outside off stump for several overs before finally bowling him. “It was testing my patience. I was getting irritated at not getting the fifth wicket,” he said. “In domestic cricket also, I get impatient for that fifth wicket. But I told myself if I can beat him once, I can beat him 10 times also.”It was a stunning return to Test cricket for a bowler who has been making more headlines in the recent past for disciplinary controversies than his bowling. Just last month, the BCCI gave Sreesanth a final warning, telling him that any further violation of the Code of Conduct would lead to him being banned from domestic cricket. “I think I have been misunderstood a lot of times, not just once or twice,” Sreesanth said. “I said in Ahmedabad also that I must be one of the most misunderstood cricketers in the world.He said he wasn’t using his second shot at Test cricket to answer his doubters. “I was not proving a point. I was enjoying more and was playing to my expectations. I have become realistic now and set goals which I can achieve.”Yes, I was desperate to get the new ball in hand. It’s always a proud moment to play for the country and it was great to open the bowling with Zaheer .”

Phillip Hughes doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration to regain his place in Australia’s Test team. When he takes the field next week for New South Wales’ first game of the Sheffield Shield season he will be alongside Simon Katich, who fought his way back into the Test side through sheer weight of domestic runs.Katich was axed soon after the 2005 Ashes defeat and focused on piling up scores for New South Wales. Having lost his place following the second Test of this year’s Ashes series, Hughes knows that prolific scoring for the Blues would give him his best chance of a Test comeback in the short term.”It was when I first started playing for New South Wales that Katto came back [to the state side],” Hughes told the . “The season that he had after that all happened was phenomenal.”He just got runs, on top of runs, on top of runs – in all forms of the game and he got back in there. The focus is to get runs and to try and win games for New South Wales and if you are putting your name up there you never know what’s at the back end of that.”Hughes was surprised when told that the chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch had advised Shane Watson, who replaced Hughes during the Ashes, to retain his versatility rather than committing himself entirely to the opening role. Hilditch also said the selectors would look to reintroduce Hughes “once he’s back to form”, so the incentive is there for Hughes to start the summer well.”I’d love to get back, but for now the main focus is to enjoy my cricket for New South Wales in all three forms of the game,” Hughes said. “That’s what I’ll be doing. I will get back into training and go from there. What’s happened has happened and I am taking it day by day and not looking too far ahead because if you do, things can happen.”Hughes doesn’t have long to prove he is back to form – New South Wales play two Sheffield Shield games before the first Test against West Indies – but he has started the season well with 202 runs at 40.40 in the Champions League Twenty20. It placed him third on the tournament tally and he was instrumental in the Blues’ triumphant campaign, but he said the squad needed to move on from the multi-million-dollar payday.”We have to put that behind us,” Hughes said. “There’s a one-day game on Sunday and we get back into training in a day, so we have a day off and get back into it with the New South Wales Blues. It’s a big season ahead and I can’t wait to get out there.”

There was no history, there wasn’t any familiar context, and there certainly wasn’t any passionate traditional rivalry but, as Brian Lara asked so memorably in his retirement speech, did the package entertain us? The answer was a screaming deafness in Nagpur, 918 kms away from Bangalore’s Chinnaswamy Stadium. The Challenger Trophy, India’s premier 50-over cricket, filled with stars such as MS Dhoni and Harbhajan Singh, was being played there in almost total silence. The crowd was conspicuous by its absence and the television ratings of the Champions League in that city should be a revealing nugget.Meanwhile, in Bangalore, the immediacy of the event didn’t help in judging the magnitude but you could feel that you were watching the landscape of cricket change. You felt the buzz when the shouts of “Kallis Kallis”, never a huge crowd favourite in these parts, thundered around the arena when he was batting. And the surprise increased when Cape Cobras were repeatedly booed through the game. You were used to Indian fans booing Australia but here they ganged up against a team of relative unknowns simply because they were the away side. However uncivil it might sound to the purists, boos are as much a barometer of a tournament’s success as is applause. “It was intimidating and probably the reason why our fielding was so shaky at the start,” Cobras’ captain Andrew Puttick said later.The first season will probably be too early to judge this format’s success but one will get an idea when two overseas clubs face off. Will the crowd be interested then? Who will they applaud? And who will they boo? The IPL 2 in South Africa earlier this year offers some indication – and hope to the organisers. It was a displaced tournament in every sense but the South Africans warmed to it. Even the almost inconsequential Karnataka Premier League that was played bereft of stars and played amid much criticism and cynicism drew full houses in Mysore and pulled in 15,000 people for the final in Bangalore.Tonight, though, the crowd lapped up the entertainment. The evening got off to a cracking start with a tightly-packed opening ceremony. Lalit Modi sure knows how to put up a show. Japanese drummers gave it a smashing beginning, Chinese Shaolin Monks showed off Tai Chi and Kung fu in a fast-paced, spellbinding performance, the Grammy-award winner Chaka Khan sang , reggae singer Shaggy kept the crowd going with his hit and British pop star Jamelia belted out before a laser show and a dazzling fireworks display.Ultimately, though, the tournament will live and die by its cricket, which doesn’t have to be of the highest quality but it certainly has to be entertaining. Tonight’s game didn’t have great bowling, barring the opening spells from Charles Langveldt and Praveen Kumar, the fielding at times was terrible and only three people sparkled with the bat but it see-sawed till the very end and the whole package was entertaining.The highlight of the evening was how JP Duminy silenced the raucous crowd, a clear indication that this tournament has the scope to throw up the little contexts and subtexts to make it successful: The people seemed to care.Duminy’s classy knock converted the game from a one-sided encounter to the thrilling opening game this tournament needed. There was a bit of self-redemption in it too. Throughout this year’s IPL, Duminy was involved in many near-misses. He would revive the chase from a hopeless position, take the team very close to victory but could not finish the job. It has obviously hurt him. “It was very satisfying that today I didn’t leave it [to others], I finished it completely,” he said. “It felt nice. It was the best innings that I have played in this format.”His is normally not a power game; his batting evokes memories of Arjuna Ranatunga with his cut shots, lap shots and that swing over square-leg that were Ranatunga’s strengths but today he found the extra zing to pepper the boundary more often than usual.The battle against his South African team-mates in the national side was engrossing as ever. There were a couple of moments that were almost a flashback of the previous edition of IPL, though with a different outcome. Playing for Mumbai Indians, Duminy had stepped out to Kallis, who responded with a bouncer before following it up with a few choice words. Today, Duminy walked out, Kallis banged it in short but the batsman pulled it forcefully over the midwicket boundary. He swung Roelof van der Merwe twice over wide long-on to emphatically win the mini-battle against his national team-mates.However, it was local hero Kumble who was at the receiving end of the decisive blow of the game. Kumble was into his final over, with 25 needed off 15. You felt Kumble knew the only chance for his team was to take out Duminy and you could almost sense the two-fingered flighted googly was going to come out at that stage. That’s his go-to delivery against attacking left-handed batsmen when he is looking for a wicket. He flights it outside off, invites the big shot and sees the batsman succumb. He tossed it up, the crowd who were chanting his name till then watched on in silence, and Duminy went for the big swing. The white ball landed amid the stunned gathering behind the wide midwicket boundary and you knew the game was over then. The silence was deafening.Somehow it seemed appropriate, for a club-based format, that the last over was bowled by a man who has never played for India, and that an unfancied side from South Africa prevailed over the favorites. Not many, if any, in the crowd clapped as the winning shot was played. You could say they weren’t sporting but you could also say they were hurt by the loss. And that can only be a good thing for a tournament like this where fan loyalty is such a priceless commodity. A few scowls and a few sullen faces aren’t a bad thing for the box-office.