IPL 7 – Review of The First leg

Finally the IPL is back in India. Which means finally, The IPL is back to its home. For the last 15 days it went to a foreign land. But I don’t think except the grounds, players found anything foreign. People came in massive numbers, most of them being Indians; players must have felt playing on Indian ground.

 But still there is a difference in playing on your home ground and playing on a foreign pitch. And we got to see the difference as most of the Indian batsmen struggled and foreign batsmen did well. Surprisingly Indian bowlers did well than the foreign bowlers. Bhuvaneshwar Kumar and Sandeep Sharma made Steyn and Johnson play second fiddle to them. Things will change though as the tournament returns to its home. Batsmen will have familiar pitches and bowlers will have to deal with flat track batting paradise.

So this is just the right time to see which players did well and which players didn’t in the first leg of the tournament.

Top 5 Batsmen:

1)      Glen Maxwell – I knew Maxwell is going to be a player to watch out in this tournament when I saw him hitting current best spinner in the world, Saeed Ajmal out of the ground with ease. He light up the tournament with a brilliantly made 95 against CSK and since then he has been the talk of the Tournament. He has almost single handedly won his team 3 games out of 5. If he keeps on playing like this for the rest of the tournament, there will be no stopping for KXIP.

2)      Dwayne Smith – Another MI export. He forms such a formidable opening pair with McCullum that these two have already contributed 4 out of 5 times in CSK wins. His long reach and sensible batting at the top has given CSK a great replacement for Hussey.

3)      JP Duminy – A player in form of his life has done everything he could for DD. He has thrashed his countrymate and has done the job of building an innings too. 2 victories out of 5 for DD have come because of Duminy. With KP back in the side and Vijay, Kock doing well at the start, DD can find success in the tournament. If only DD can make more use of Duminy’s superb form.

4)      David Miller – It has been a MaxMiller show for KXIP. Miller has batted sensibly. He gives all the strike to Maxwell at the start and lets him score. Then after Maxwell’s dismissal, he takes the full charge of the game and finishes the job in style. Perfect strategy!

5)      Ajinkya Rahane – The only Indian in the list. He knows his job well and does it superbly. His role is to anchor the innings and play till the end. With a couple of fifties he has already made his mark on this tournament. He was the only Indian player who was consistent at the top.

Top 5 bowlers:

1)      Sunil Narine – It seems his mystery is still intact. With an economy rate of less than 6 and a current holder of Purple cap, he has done no harm to his reputation. He has been so good that KKR have over relied on him and that has hurt them.

2)      Bhuvaneshwar Kumar – He has taken more wickets than Steyn and has bowled more economical too. This is an enough indication about how well he has bowled. Bowling up front was always his strength but in this IPL he has done well at the death too.

3)      Varun Aaron – He has bowled fast. But he does that everytime. What is good to see is that he has been accurate. And when you have a combination of Pace and accuracy it makes you a genuine threat to any batsmen. What adds to his impressive performance is that other fast bowlers like Johnson, Starc and Yadav haven’t been that impressive.

4)      Mohit Sharma – He impressed everyone in last year’s edition and he’s doing it again this year. He has been smart and deceptive, has used the back of the hand slower ball with great execution and that’s what has given him success.

5)      Laxmipathy Balaji – Except the first game against CSK, Balaji has bowled really well so far. He has been accurate and has bowled to his field. With Johnson struggling for line and length Balaji has taken care of KXIP’s bowling performance. 

Special shoutout for Sandeep Sharma. He has been brilliant in last couple of games. He’s young and has got a very good inswinger. He’s someone to look forward to.

While these players have found success there are some players who still haven’t turned up for this tournament. Gambhir and Hussey had a torrid time at the start. Yusuf Pathan has continued his poor form from last year. The big buy Corey Anderson has had a terrible tournament so far with not a single good performance with either bat or ball. After making a name for himself in recently concluded World T20, Amit Mishra has been hit for sixes by Maxwell and Pollard. Ojha has been poor too. Allan Donald said Ashoke Dinda is one of the best death bowlers in India. Dinda did everything to prove him wrong. Albie Morkel, Umesh Yadav, Awana adds to the list of poor performers. But there is still a lot of time left in the tournament and in familiar environment these players have enough chance to turn their fortunes and do well for themselves and their teams.

With tournament returning to India expect close finishes, noisy crowd, big scores scored, big scores chased, individual records broken and lots of more. Eventually one team will come on top. But what is interesting to see is who will be the stand out player of this edition of IPL. At the end of the first leg Glen Maxwell is the clear winner.