Season 8 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) enters its final stretch with nearly two-thirds of the games over.
Here are four observations for the season so far:
#IPL500
Sunday’s game between the Rajasthan Royals and Delhi Daredevils was the IPL’s 500th game. Depending on which side of the IPL line you sit, those 500 have either flown past and it feels as if Brendon McCullum was launching the league in fireworks only yesterday, or it has felt an interminably long time and 500 games feel like 5,000. In light of how other Twenty20 leagues have fared around the world, it probably makes sense to pay fair due to the endurance of its model. Leagues in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have failed, Pakistan is still struggling to launch its own, Australia took a few years to get it right and England still has not.
The fact is no other league has a market as ripe for such a competition as India.
But in overcoming self-inflicted wounds, the IPL’s stickability deserves recognition.
Fading MS Dhoni?
No player has come to represent everything about the IPL as well as MS Dhoni.
He has been its centrepiece player and the star of the league’s most successful franchise.
But since his Test retirement, the sense that a uniquely magnificent career is coming to an end is unmissable.
No suggestion has been made that he is to leave the shorter formats but, increasingly, his batting has lost an edge.
It was the inevitability of his finishing that made him the most dangerous batsman in the format, but this season he has looked off-key on several occasions.
His strike rates and averages are both lower this season than ever before, as are his not outs, arguably his defining statistic, though his boundary count remains high.
This little phase could be the beginning of the end of MS Dhoni.
In his defence, he is the one player nobody should write off, and Chennai are where they usually are under his leadership: at the top.
Aussie-watch
The multi-nationality of the IPL has always been one of its selling points, that it is an inclusive festival for world cricket, mostly (Pakistanis will object).
But some countries have always felt more included than others. Maybe only the West Indies can match the affiliation of Australian cricketers with the IPL, though probably not by numbers.
This season has 25 Australian current or former international cricketers involved with franchises, eight of whom are in coaching positions.
It has been this way since the IPL’s inception: Shane Warne, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Watson, Shaun Marsh, David Warner have all been early headliners for the league.
Their impact has been mixed this season.
Warner is second among run-scorers, and George Bailey, Steve Smith and Watson have had good seasons.
Glenn Maxwell has been a high-profile flop, with less runs than even Harbhajan Singh.
Mitchell Starc has continued his outstanding World Cup form and Nathan Coulter-Nile has also been prominent. Mitchell Johnson, on the other hand, has been less effective.
Despite this, one or two of them will almost certainly play a major role for whoever wins the league.
Old gold
There was a time, long ago, when Ashish Nehra was India’s most promising paceman.
He bowled quickly, he could swing the ball and he had the advantage of the left-arm angle.
His own fitness as much as anything has prevented him from fulfilling that promise and he became somewhat of a poster boy for unfulfilled Indian pace potential over the past decade.
But it has not looked that way this season. Nehra turned 36 a week ago and is sitting pretty at the top of the wicket-taker’s chart for the season.
He has bowled with the wisdom of a man of that age and has not really lost a lot of pace.
In a country where a loss of pace for young bowlers as they tire has been a key trend, Dhoni highlighted Nehra’s ability to keep his pace “effortlessly”.
It is some skill and to it can be added swing and consistent, restrictive-length bowling.
Given he only needs to bowl four overs, maybe this is the format for which Nehra was born.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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