The IPL effect

The IPL has had a great impact all over the world more importantly back home in India by having the virtue of giving the Indian youngsters the right chances. It was great to see T.Suman and H.Singh help the Deccan Chargers win their games against RCB tice and once against the CSK. The main idea behind creating such a league would have been the same. The fact that Indian players are allowed to share their dressing rooms with a lot of foreign players and their childhood heroes themselves means that these youngsters have got a lot of encouragement and these youngsters have got the best opportunity of establishing themselves in the international arena. Even Krishnamacharri Srikanth would not have thought that he would have such a big pool of players to select a squad of 18- imagine how competitive it is if the squad does not has the service of players like Robin Uthappa, Sourabh Tiwary who are absolutely in form, Pragyan Ojha who holds the purple cap in the IPL.

It is really a nice feeling to see so many local players performing in the league and what makes it more interesting is the way the seniors in the team have stood up front to inspire the youngsters. Tendulkar and Kallis have been on the race for the orange cap. Kumble is the most economical bowler in this IPL. Symonds has served his side with an all round performance(he is the only player to score over 250 runs and 10 wickets in this IPL). Ganguly has showed the same zeal that he had while leading the Indian national side. Sangakkara and Jayawardane have showed their team how to win games. Dhoni has proved why he is one of the best captains India has ever got and Collingwood proved why he is still one of the most competitive player from the English side.

One regret that i still have with this league is that both the seasons of this tournament have been won by foreign captains and to be more precise Australian Captains. This never means that Indian captains are any way lesser than the Australian ones. Reaching the semi finals could be a collective show of consistency and from there on it is one of play and any day can be a good day for any team. Remember that even Zimbabwe beat Australia in the first World T20, none of the IPL teams can be compared to Zimbabwe though. May be the Indian captains become desperate towards the end of any innings - may be they would be in need of wickets or in need of quick runs.

Both Shane Warne and Adam Gilchrist kept cool in the finals of the tournament. Warne's RR side was chasing a modest total of 160 which in the frist edition of the IPL was considered to be a good one- teams used to struggle to keep their run rates to 8 - and the moment Billy Bowden declared Yusuf Pathan not out of a bouncer from Balaji, Dhoni just became so wild and from there the game changed. The ball had just went through Pathan's helmet and everyone on the ground except Billy and Pathan. When playing the last three overs the CSK became so desparate of wicket but they forgot the fact that RR had already lost seven wickets and had they gone for saving the boundaries, they would have won the game. The same way RCB lost the finals of the last edition by trying too much to go for the boundaries. Rather their job would have been done with just singles. They had done well to restrict the DC to 140 but still lost the game.

Irrespective of who wins tha DLF IPL I would like to see an Indian captain lift that trophy which could be possible if none of the three teams with foreign captains qualify for the semi finals. The KXIP are almost eliminated and the RR and DC have got just a theoretical chance to be in there.

This would eventually mean that one of the Indian captains is going to win the tournament for the first time and I would be the happiest man if that Indian is the Bangalore captain Anil Kumble.