Exhibit A: In his first game of the season for Royal Challengers Bangalore, AB de Villiers smashed nine sixes and three fours in a 46-ball 89, as he made more than half his side’s runs.
Exhibit B: Four days later, in his first appearance after recovering from a shoulder injury, Virat Kohli struck five fours and two sixes in an unflustered 47-ball 62. Then, in defence of 143, Samuel Badree — playing his first match for the franchise — took a third-over hat-trick.
Bangalore lost both games, and in truth, they were not even close. Kings XI Punjab ruined De Villiers’s return on Monday, romping home with 33 deliveries to spare.
As for Kohli, he looked furious in the field as Mumbai Indians eased home with seven balls remaining on Friday, after having been 33 for five at one stage in their innings before they regrouped to win.
A month ago, Kohli and Steve Smith were at the forefront as India and Australia, the two highest ranked sides in the world, fought out an enthralling Test series.
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Now, less than two weeks into the Indian Premier League, both are leading teams that have made 1-3 starts to the competition, with Smith at the head of Rising Pune Supergiant. Worryingly, neither franchise seems any closer to identifying a best XI.
Shane Watson, who led Bangalore in three matches with Kohli sidelined, was dropped for the Mumbai game.
His slow-medium bowling no longer poses any threat, and more than a year after his last international cap, his batting is lacking the edge that once made him one of the IPL’s biggest names.
Then, there is his mobility, or rather lack there of. It is something he shares with the equally statuesque Chris Gayle.
Neither is capable of the quick sprint for singles and twos, and are hardly quicksilver in the field.
Royal Challengers Bangalore bowler Tymal Mills. Aijaz Rahi / AP Photo
Gayle has scored 60 off 56 balls in three games so far. A recall for Travis Head, who also provides an additional bowling option, cannot be far away.
Badree’s display, after a mystifying lack of opportunities with both Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings, should see him get a decent run, but the jury is still out on Tymal Mills, Bangalore’s big-ticket bowling option from the February auction.
Th Englishman looked good initially, but has gone at more than 10 an over in the last two games. He too is a liability in the field.
In contrast with its free-scoring past, the square in Bangalore has seen two relatively low-scoring games, with batsmen struggling for a semblance of timing.
It has, however, afforded decent bounce, making it almost imperative that the team looks to Billy Stanlake for their home matches.
Rising Pune Supergiant captain Steve Smith. Punit Paranjpe / AFP
At 2.04 metres, the Queensland fast bowler is one of the tallest to have played the game. He is still pretty raw, but there were enough glimpses of what he could offer in a four-over spell that helped seal the team’s only win — against Delhi Daredevils last Saturday.
If De Villiers, Badree and Mills — for now — have three of the four overseas-players slots, Bangalore can select only one more from Gayle, Head and Stanlake. And despite him needing just three more to become the first player past 10,000 T20 runs, Gayle should not be in pole position.
Smith and Pune have wafer-thin bowling resources and that is at the root of their problems.
Gujarat Lions gave Imran Tahir a proper working over, and aside from him and Ben Stokes, not one frontline bowler has conceded less than 10 an over.
Ashok Dinda — karate-kid headband, flying leap and all — has gone for 119 in his 10 overs, while Lockie Ferguson’s first IPL spell saw him go for 44, and Dan Christian appears to be a parody of the player who once played for Australia.
With MS Dhoni in such wretched form, and Ben Stokes yet to justify top billing at the auction, it could be another season of struggle for the underwhelming Supergiant.
Things to watch out for in the IPL:
Gujarat Lions bowler Andrew Tye. Punit Paranjpe / AFP
Tye-ing them up
At 30, Andrew Tye is no new kid on the block. He has also been knocking around the IPL for a couple of seasons. Having not got a game with Chennai Super Kings in 2015, he spent last season sitting out again, that time with Gujarat Lions. But having bowled so dreadfully in their opening two games, he was one of the beneficiaries as the franchise sought their first win of the season. Tye duly delivered a hat-trick, with the well-disguised knuckle ball particularly eye-catching.
The Kohli-Dhoni reunion
Both their teams are in disarray, and only one of them is now a franchise captain. But there will be far more than cursory interest as the past and present of Indian cricket leadership come face to face at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Sunday. Though his side did not win, Kohli showed few signs of ring rust on his return. Dhoni’s stock, however, is in free fall. Sourav Ganguly, who he axed from the national team’s one-day international side nearly a decade ago, has questioned his credentials as a Twenty20 player in his role as a media pundit, and his fans have been restricted to howls of outrage — against perceived slights — rather than sustained applause.
The Gambhir show
Gautam Gambhir’s surname can mean ‘intense’, and the Kolkata Knight Riders captain is nothing if not that, on and off the field. He also pulled off a masterstroke by having Sunil Narine open the batting against Punjab. The West Indian off-spinner, who had earlier taken one for 19 in a tidy spell, duly smacked 37 off just 18 balls. Gambhir returned briefly to the Test side in 2016, and more such displays could see him make the Champions Trophy cut. Unfortunately, discussions about him over the past few days have rarely been about cricket. A couple of strident tweets on the situation in Kashmir have polarised opinion, and obscured the wonderful start he’s made to IPL 10.
Questionable tweeting
You would have been better off poking a beehive with a stick than calling a West Indian cricketer ‘brainless’, as Sanjay Manjrekar did of Kieron Pollard on commentary a few days ago. Pollard’s subsequent irate tweet in response caused a stir, but he showed commendable restraint at the post-match presentation in Bangalore on Friday, after he had made a game-winning 47-ball 70 — perhaps his finest innings for Mumbai. He is a gentle giant, but not one you want to rile.
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