So, suddenly you can earn big money playing cricket. Forget about the Champions’ League and the IPL, the seriously big money is now in the Stanford Super Stars series (or whatever it ends up being called). For those of you not plugged in to cricket news, this will be a five game series between England and the Stanford Super Stars (presumably mainly West Indians, but you never know, Stanford may get serious about winning), each of which carries a $20 million prize purse. That sum is divided as follows: $1m each of the 12 players in the winning team; $1m for the coaches and the rest of the winning squad; and $7m to be divided between the English and West Indies cricket boards. The latter sum will doubtless include salaries for the losing team.

Naturally there has been a certain amount of doom and gloom predicted, most of it for daft reasons such as worrying how the players will cope under the pressure. Presumably if Agnew were reporting on soccer he’d be calling for penalty shoot-outs to be banned because they upset the players. I’m rather more worried about whether the grand plan actually works. The problem looks like this…
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English cricket got a taste of the Lalit Modi effect today as the Commissioner of the IPL weighed into the debate over who plays for who in the Champions League. As some of you may know, the IPL was a panic reaction by Indian cricket to head off the rebel Indian Cricket League. ICL players have been banned from the IPL, and from playing for their countries, which is why the current New Zealand squad is so weak. Now Modi has thrown England’s Twenty20 competition into chaos by announcing that no team that fields an ICL player will be allowed into the Champions League. There are precisely three English counties that don’t have an ICL player on their books: Essex, Middlesex and Somerset. If Modi is right, and squads are not changed, only those three can qualify for the Champions League, regardless of who actually wins the English Twenty20 Cup.

But that’s a big “if”. Modi is known for his grandstanding, and he must know that a) the Champions League rules are still being drawn up, and b) that the English counties have only a day or so to make up their minds what to do. He’ll be enjoying this, especially after some of the things that English commentators have said about his league.

And not content with upsetting English cricket, Modi has aimed a blow at the Australians as well. As you may recall, there is an outstanding issues as to what happens in the Champions League with players who have been part of more than one qualifying team. The big question here is over Michael Hussey, who could play for either Chennai or Western Australia. Modi’s solution is simple: Indian sides always take precedence, though they will graciously agree to pay compensation to teams who are denied key players. Given that Cricket Australia have been given the task of drawing up the competition’s rules, I can’t see that one flying. But again Modi will be enjoying himself. It is fun to watch too.

My congratulations to Shane Watson whose heroic performances for the Rajastahn Royals have seen him called up to the Australian one-day squad in place of the injured Matty Hayden. Go Royals!

Shaun Marsh is doubtless disappointed. He must have thought he had a chance, given that he and Hayden are specialist opening batsmen and Watson is not, but I’m sure that his time will come.

Seven weeks or so of a game every day and it comes down to this. A sell-out crowd of 60,000. An estimated television audience of 99 million. A pre-match show featuring Cirque du Soleil and a collection of Bollywood singing and dancing stars. And two teams of 11 cricketers, many of whom had never been in anything anywhere near this big in their lives before. Two men, however, were no strangers to the pressure. The Chennai Super Kings were led by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who also captained India’s victorious team in last year’s Twenty20 World Cup. And in charge for the Rajasthan Royals, Shane Warne, who with Australia has won just about every cricketing honor that there is to win. All we needed now, was a titanic struggle, and boy did we get one!
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IPL action continued in Mumbai today with the second semi-final. Yuvraj Singh’s Punjab Kings’ XI finished second in the league, and were favorites to go on to the finals, but against them were MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings. You may remember that the Super Kings had a superb start to the season, thanks in no small part to their Australian batsmen, Matty Hayden and Michael Hussey. When the Aussies had to leave for their tour of the West Indies Chennai faltered, and barely made the semi-finals, but there they were. And they were also secure in the knowledge that they had beaten the Punjab side twice in the regular season.
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And so, after a month and half of pulsating action, the final chapters of the first IPL season are about to be written. The first semi-final is between the league-topping Rajasthan Royals, led as ever by the wily Shane Warne, and the big-hitting Delhi Daredevils, led by the explosive Virender Sehwag. The match is to be played at the neutral venue of Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai in front of a sell-out 45,000 crowd. Having been the class team of the regular season, the Jaipur side were favorites to win, but they can’t have forgotten the 9-wicket hammering they got from Delhi in their first game of the tournament.
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Through some quirk of the scheduling gods, the final regular season match of the IPL was between the two teams most likely to contest the final. Being two games clear, the Royals could not fail to finish on top of the table. They therefore elected to rest a number of key players: Warne, Smith, Asnodkar and Tanvir. The Kings XI, on the other hand, were determined to prove a point in advance of the playoffs. Stand-in captain Shane Watson won the toss and elected to field, and right from the beginning the Royals were up against it. Shaun Marsh led the charge with a magnificent 115 that saw him claim the trophy for the most runs in the regular season, despite having only played 10 matches. He’s averaging over 74. This kid has got to be in the running for the Australian one-day squad.

Yuvraj was also in fine form. Once he got wound up it was big-hitting all the way. At one point he had scored 31 runs off six consecutive balls, though that was spread over 3 overs from different bowlers. He was also on 49 off 16 balls and looking good to set the fastest 50 of the tournament. However, they were in the last over, and he got himself run out off the next ball trying too hard for extra runs.

The Royals made a decent fist of the run chase, but without Smith and Asnodkar to get them off to a good start they were always behind the asking rate. Irfan Pathan was the hero with the ball for Punjab, conceding only 10 runs off his four overs, and taking the valuable wicket of Younis Khan. In the end, a target of 222 was way too much, but the second-string Royals team did manage 180, a score that was beyond many of the teams in the tournament. Yuvraj will be pleased to have beaten his main rivals, but Warne and Snape will doubtless be pointing out to their men that they almost won with one hand tied behind their backs. It remains to be seen which psychological ploy worked the best.

Mumbai Indians ended their season on a high note with a crushing 9-wicket win over Bangalore. Sachin Tendulkar will have enjoyed finishing the match by hitting a couple of fours off Anil Kumble, but he’ll have to look back on the team’s recent results and know that turning just one of those close finishes into a win would have meant that his team was in the finals. Twenty20 is a game of narrow margins, and it is very unforgiving to a team that cracks under pressure.

There was to be no fairytale ending for the Deccan Chargers’ fans. Gifted a final home game that actually mattered to their opponents, the Chargers surrendered limply once again. As usual, most of their runs were scored by their Indian players rather than by their high-paid foreign stars – Venugopal Rao has been particularly impressive throughout. And a total of 147 was never much of a problem for Chennai to overhaul. So the Super Kings are safe in the semi-finals at last, and the journalists of the Deccan Chronicle have one last opportunity to vent their fury on their under-performing team.

That win also means that Mumbai are definitely out of the tournament. The one point from the washed out game means that Delhi will finish ahead of Mumbai even if they both win the same number of games. That’s a shame because it means that tomorrow’s game in Bangalore is now being played only for pride.

Another knife edge game in the IPL today. The result was largely irrelevant to the Royals, save that they wanted to keep their 100% home record and their momentum going into the finals. No Graeme Smith in the line-up today, but hopefully he was just resting. Mumbai, on the other hand, were desperate for a win to keep their hopes alive.

Warne won the toss and elected to field. The wicket proved difficult to score on, and the Rajasthan bowlers did a good job of restricting Jayasuriya and Tendulkar. Pollock went first ball again, which did his team no favors at all. It should have been an easy game, except that Shane Watson leaked 25 runs in the final over. I thought at the time it might cost us the game.

The Royals innings followed a similar pattern with none of the batsmen able to stamp their authority on the game. Consequently, when it came down to the final overs, the scores were pretty much level. Rajasthan needed 32 to win off the last 12 balls, and the fate of the team lay in the hands of two largely unknown Indian batsmen, Niraj Patel and 19-year-old Ravindra Jadeja. This, I suspect, was just what Warne and Snape wanted – a baptism of fire for their less-famous players in a match that didn’t count. One team or the other would crack under the pressure, and in the end it was Mumbai. With the Royals needing 3 to win off the last ball, Fernando first bowled a wide, and then was party, with Jayasuriya, to some panicked fielding that allowed the Royals batsmen to scamper through for 2 runs to win the game.

This, ultimately, is what Twenty20 is all about: pressure. Mumbai have lost three close games on the trot. They ought to be in the semi-finals, but they threw all three games away because they cracked in the final overs. The Royals, meanwhile, cruise serenely on, and every close game that they win reinforces the positive message that their captain and coaches have been trying to instill. Now they have proved to themselves that they can win even when their big guns don’t fire. It is very impressive.

Today’s second match in the IPL was of no great importance in the standings. Punjab were already guaranteed a place in the semi-finals; Kolkata had no chance. But the Prince of Kolkata is a very proud and very combative man. The one thing you could bet on was that Sourav Ganguly was going to go down fighting. Besides, there was Bollywood pride at stake – Preity Zinta against Shah Rukh Khan. This was a game that was going to be hard fought.

The Kings XI batted first, with Marsh and Sangakkara doing their usual good work at the top of the order. A total of 174 was going to take some getting, especially against the Punjab bowling attack. And so it seemed for a long time. Most of the Knight Riders’ batting went cheaply. Sreesanth and Chawla again picked up wickets. But Ganguly would not give up, and eventually he got help. Umar Gul came in with the score on 106-6, and immediately smashed James Hopes for two big sixes. Ganguly then took a hand. Off three overs Chawla had figures of 2-18, but his fourth doubled the run tally as Ganguly smashed him all around the park. Gul then set about Sreesanth’s final over; another 14 runs on the board. VRV Singh was a little cannier, tempting Gul into a lofted shot that dropped into Powar’s hands. And eventually it came down to just the ending that the Bollywood scriptwriters would have wanted: 15 to win off the last over, and Ganguly on strike. This being Bollywood, there was no doubt about the outcome. Two more huge sixes, with a two in between, and the Kolkata captain was able to hit the winning run and ride off into the sunset. His team was out, but he had fought to the last.

From the Royals point of view, of course, it is good to see the Kings’ confidence get a bit of a shaking prior to the playoffs.

It has been an interesting day for Vijay Mallya. He, of course, is out in Monaco, about which I’m saying nothing as Kevin has the race on tape to watch when he gets home. I can, however, report that the Bangalore Royal Challengers have registered another victory. The Deccan Chargers batted first, with Gilchrist and Gibbs getting them off to an excellent start. Sadly the rest of the batting order could not maintain the pace, and the Chargers only managed 165. No one in the Bangalore side got a big score, but Kallis, ul-Haq, Dravid, White and Akhil all contributed, and the Royal Challengers brought home the victory with an over to spare. That loss consigns the Hyderabad team to last place in the table. Goodness only what they’ll be writing in the Deccan Chronicle tomorrow.

Today’s game between Mumbai and Delhi was every bit as exciting as it promised to be. Both teams desperately needed to win, and the match see-sawed back and fore. Jayasuriya got Mumbai off to an excellent start with 66 off 42 balls. Delhi then managed to peg the Mumbai batsmen down, but Robin Uthappa, making up for his failure in the last game, hit 46 off 23 balls to take Mumbai to a defensible 176. When they got rid of Sehwag and Gambhir early Mumbai must have thought they were in with a chance, but the rest of the Delhi batting dug deep. Dinesh Karthik was man of the match for his 56*, but Delhi still needed 8 to win off the last over. As it was, Maharoof got them home with one ball to spare.

Delhi are now 3rd in the table, and have completed all of their games. But both Chennai (one game away against the Chargers) and Mumbai (away games against the Royals and Royal Challengers) could overhaul them. The problem for Mumbai is that they have to win both games, and coming away from Jaipur with a win is going to be very hard indeed.

Fabulous entertainment in Chennai today. The Royals batted first and massed a whopping 211, thanks largely to 91 off 51 balls by Graeme Smith. Chennai did a great job of trying to chase the target, and very nearly got there. Warne’s 2-35 off his four overs were crucial in slowing them down, because when you are scoring at that rate losing a wicket is a real problem. Credit is due also to Pankaj Singh, who gave up only 30 from his 4 overs, and to Tanvir who took on the key role of bowing the final over. Chennai only needed 15 to win, but Tanvir held his nerve, giving up only 3 runs, and taking two wickets as the batsmen got increasingly desperate. That’s just the sort of really tough challenge the Royals needed going into the finals. Next up, the crucial match between Delhi and Mumbai.