Brilliant Final - A grand finale for IPL really

It was a final and sunday morning in Dallas. I woke up and checked some free p2p options for the IPL channel, none were working. It was a great stage set for the grand finale but after lack luster semi-finals, I was skeptical about the finals also. I still took the gamble and bought a 10 dollar pass at willow.tv to get the access to the finals - un-interrupted. I remember a lot of instances where my investments of both time and money have gone into the ditch through poor finals/crunch matches. But since it was 20-20 and IPL finals, I was hoping for at least one good innings from either of the teams. Well what we all witnessed was a great great game of cricket where both the teams were inseparable in terms of their performances. 163 was a good score set by Dhoni's team but yet again Yusuf Pathan played one of those camios. Cannot discuss about match and analyze what went right or wrong for the two teams because it was a final ball cliffhanger. Rajasthan Royals were predicted to be the winners by many and they were most deserving of all. I am glad that they won in the end. Thankfully I saw the game undisturbed and enjoyed every moment of it with my family. It was time and money well spent in the end.

Photos from Timesofindia.com

He is back, with a bang

Balaji's home ground return to "limelight cricket" was sensational when he took 5 wickets against Punjab including a hat-trick. This is the 14th in T20 and a thoroughly deserving man got it. He was one of my favorite bowlers back in 2004 when he played a marvelous series against Pakistan. He almost single handedly won India the series.Cricinfo says:

Lakshmipathy Balaji has gone through an entire career in five years - burst onto the scene, won a series, hailed as the next big thing, been injured, recovered, been dropped, injured again, disappeared from public memory - but was yet to play a big match on his home ground. So it was only fitting the famous smile that won over Pakistan in 2004 could manage a grand return in his beloved Chennai.

Balaji's spell of 4 overs 24 runs and 5 wickets was the differentiator in a yet again close match. Chennai's team seems to be coming back on track. While they lost Hayden and Hussey in batting department, they have got Balaji and Morkel as their strike bowlers. This means that Joginder sharma may not get  a chance now to play in IPL.

Update: Timesofindia has this interesting stuff about Balaji. 

Chennai's australian problem

Hayden and Hussey were kingpins of Chennai team couple of weeks back. They had put their side at number 1 and threatened to go unbeaten. But reality struck when they both had to leave for the West Indian tour. The side has slid to 4th position and is now loosing consistently.

Cricinfo's George Binoy notes:"The nature of the Twenty20 format is such that it leaves an extremely small margin for error - and almost none at the top. The failure of the Chennai Super Kings' top order after the departure of Matthew Hayden and Michael Hussey has been the primary reason for their slip from No 1 in the points table to No 4. The replacements, Stephen Fleming, Parthiv Patel and a rotating No 3 - they've tried S Vidyut and S Anirudha - have failed to provide direction to the innings."

Rest of the batsmen Dhoni, Morkel and Suresh Raina are very capable, but they also need a good starts from their openers. If you look at the rest of the teams, none of them have all stars and specially after the Australians have left. In fact Gilly's team has had a great lineup but still they are amongst the bottom two. Dhoni says:"Our top-order batsmen played too many shots. They were in two minds whether to go for the shot or not and ultimately lost their wickets playing their shots late. We could not get the right combinations in the last three matches but we should not panic. It is not individuals but we have to work as a team." I agree with Dhoni here. Its the loss of their star players and not able to find the right combination, the reasons for their struggle. I hope they come together and make the competition more open. Right now, Punjab Kings and Rajasthan Royals are on a roll. Delhi is also not far behind. Keep watching, its getting more interesting.