The IPL Experience

Offlate, most of my sleep has been deprived thanks to IPL (matches start at 10:30 PM for us here). It has brought out a lot of wonderful moments – Who can forget the Ponting celebrating with Ishant (even had an instance of him running all the way from slips to share something with him) in the first ever match and what about the sixes by Shane Warne off Symonds to win the game in the last over. My support for Dhoni went all the more up after his support to Sivamani during the incident at Bangalore (For the less informed, Bengalooru security guy dismantled Sivamani’s drums etc when he wanted to perform inside the ground after the match – maybe he didnt know who Sivamani was or was too bitter about their TEST T20 team 😆 )

Elsewhere Sreesanth after deservedly getting the slap from Harbhajan has been performing very well after that (Psst. From now, whenever sree is not doing his best all we need is someone to slap him). And before I forget, a special mention to the Cheerleaders, esp of Bangalore and now recently Jaipur 😛 and also the cute girl from Chennai Superkings (Couldn’t get foto 😦 ). Deccan Cheerleaders haven’t been bad either but poor girls have nothing to cheer about.

Not surprisingly the teams with the best or should i say innovative/fearless captains have topped the table like Chennai with Dhoni, Rajasthan with Warne, Delhi with Sehwag and Kolkatta with Dada‘s magic slowly catching up. yeah, Punjab too is on top but the credit of that need not go to Mr.Attitude Yuvi nor to Priety who has been hugging everyone in the squad except Sreesanth, no wonder he is crying hoarse. Shaun Marsh (along with Pathan/Bajji’s slap to Sreesanth) deserves that credit. He has been playing neat and wonderful cricketing shots with almost no slogging and its been a treat to watch.

And IPL has now given VVS a hairline fracture making it convenient for him to sit out of the remaining matches and let Gillie handle the embarassment – if only he had done that earlier, Deccan ‘Dischargers‘ might have found a way through to the top. Coz with Gillie’s captaincy somehow EVEN the ‘kill-me-i-wont-get-runs-but-waste-deliveries-Venugopal Rao’ is hitting boundaries. The less I write about Bangalore Old Monks err ‘Royal Challengers’ the better. Enough posts on them and their ‘I-have-constipation-Rahul-Dravid’ are over the web. Watching L Balaji a.ka. ‘Naayudu’ get a hatrick for Chennai has been one more pleasant memory from IPL – having played for some time with him and him being my friend’s friend, it was even more heartwarming 🙂

Now the tournament is interestingly poised with Rajasthan/Chennai almost set to enter the Semis with most likely Delhi and Punjab to follow suit unless Kolkatta/Mumbai spoil the party which should be interesting to see. Since Sachin is set to return for the match against CSK it should be a fabulous sight to watch him play alongside Sanath Jayasuriya.