2023 IPL – Bulletproof Truth

Busy, busy, busy at World Cup qualifiers

“Most of our boys have watched the West Indies only on television.” – Monty Desai, Nepal head coach

Telford Vice / Harare

WINTER’S dusk descends hard and fast in Zimbabwe, banishing the day’s warmth and flooding the sudden gloom with an invasive chill in an instant. Even so, the West Indian and Nepalese players took the opportunity to linger in each other’s company on a rapidly darkening outfield after their match in the men’s World Cup qualifiers at Harare Sports Club on Thursday.

Alzarri Joseph, sitting on the turf languidly, held court in one gaggle. In another Jason Holder stood all of his 2.01 metres tall, chatting and smiling and clearly enjoying the moment. Most of the talking was done by the West Indians, most of the listening by the rapt Nepalese.

One of the topics discussed might have been their workload. Including warm-up matches, Thursday’s game was the Windies’ fourth in nine days. They will have played two more by Monday evening. Nepal have been on the park five times in the same nine days, with another match to come on Saturday. Stand by for the Super Sixes, the place play-offs and the final.

The finalists, who will meet at HSC on July 9, will have played 10 matches in 27 days. This year’s IPL champions, Chennai Super Kings, played 16 times in 59 days. If all of those games in both tournaments went down to the last ball, the finalists at the qualifiers would have been on the field for 1,000 overs and CSK for 640. The internationals would have worked 36% harder than the IPL sides in 45.76% of the time it took to complete the latter. Fifteen of the players who featured in the IPL, which ended 21 days before the qualifiers started, are among the 151 in the squads in Zimbabwe.

The 10 teams will play all 34 games in the tournament proper — minus the warm-ups — in the space of 22 days. The same programme was followed in the previous edition of the qualifiers, also in Zimbabwe, in March 2018.

Shai Hope has never played in the IPL, but he’s here. As West Indies’ captain and first-choice wicketkeeper-batter, he has been on the field for 269.5 of the 381.4 overs — more than 70% — his team have spent batting and fielding in the qualifiers. How was he holding up?

“I’m not sure at the moment, I’ll be able to answer that question in the morning,” Hope said after Thursday’s game, in which he batted for 43.3 overs for his 132 and was behind the stumps for Nepal’s innings of 49.4 overs.

“We got some time off after the first game, which was good. But these games are going to come at a much faster turnover, so we’ve got to make sure our recovery is on point and we focus a lot more on how we do things off the field.”

That time off was three days between a game against the United States on Sunday and Thursday’s match. Happily for the Windies, all four of their games have been in Harare — Bulawayo is a 35-minute flight away — as is their showdown with Zimbabwe on Saturday.

Nicholas Pooran hasn’t been as busy as Hope — 237.4 on-field overs, or more than 60% of the total. “This is what we signed up for,” Pooran said after scoring 115 on Thursday. “Unfortunately we have to qualify for the World Cup. It’s a tough road. We need to get some rest tonight, recover tomorrow, and turn up on Saturday.”

Nepal, Oman, Scotland and Ireland will have only one day off between each of their four group games. “I would have preferred one more day of rest inbetween but it is what it is, we just have to get on with it,” Monty Desai, Nepal’s head coach, said on Thursday.

Desai’s team face the Netherlands at Takashinga, also in Harare, on Saturday in what looms as a shootout for third place in group A — and thus for a spot in the Super Sixes. “It’s straightforward: Netherlands or us,” Desai said. “It’s all a mental game now. We’ll get ready mentally and trust our skills.”

Nepal played the first of their 111 white-ball internationals in March 2014. Only eight of them have involved countries that were full members at the time. They have had three games each against Zimbabwe and Ireland and one against Bangladesh. And, on Thursday, West Indies — who followed the stand of 216 Hope and Pooran shared by bouncing out the Nepalese to nail down victory by 101 runs.

Not that you would have thought they had been roughly dealt with as they mingled willingly with the winners on the outfield. Nepal looked like winners themselves, and they were. To get to the qualifiers they had to finish among the top three teams in World Cup League 2, a competition that ran from August 2019 to March this year in which each of the seven teams played 36 matches. Nepal won 19 games to finish behind Scotland and Oman.

“Most of our boys have watched the West Indies only on television,” Desai said. “For them it was a proud moment to play against a Test nation. Maybe the batsmen got distracted by the occasion and the barrage of short balls. But it’s OK. For us it’s a pure learning experience.”

Even in the aftermath of defeat, in the sniping cold and gathering dark of an outfield far from home. Maybe they were tired, but they were also happy.

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Du Plessis ‘not planning’ to be at World Cup

“I’ll talk about it more when the time is right.” – Faf du Plessis on this year’s World Cup.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

HOW does Faf du Plessis feel about reports this week quoting Rob Walter, South Africa’s white-ball coach, as saying his inclusion in the squad for this year’s ODI World Cup in India in October and November was a long shot? In a word, meh.

Du Plessis is currently shooting the lights out at the IPL, where he has scored 576 runs at a strike rate of 157.80 in 11 innings for Royal challengers Bangalore in the same conditions and against some of the same bowlers who will likely be among South Africa’s opponents at the World Cup.

But Cricbuzz has been reliably informed that the tournament isn’t, at this stage, part of Du Plessis’ plans for the rest of the year. Having played his last match for South Africa in February 2021, and less than 10 weeks from his 39th birthday, it seems he has moved on.

If that is the case, it would mark a change from how Du Plessis saw things in February 2021 after his return from the tour to Pakistan. He wrote in Faf: Through Fire of a meeting he had with then CSA director of cricket Graeme Smith shortly after coming home, in which he revealed his intention to retire from Tests.

He also told Smith he “still wanted to represent the Proteas in ODIs and T20s for as long as my form justified my selection. But I suggested that I now take a longer break from ODIs, at least a year, perhaps even two. This would give [Smith] and Mark [Boucher, South Africa’s coach at that stage] the time and space to build a strong squad for the 2023 ODI World Cup. If, in the months leading up to the tournament, I was still good enough to be in contention and they wanted me to be available, I’d be there for the team.”

Du Plessis was pipped to the orange cap by two runs by Ruturaj Gaikwad in the 2021 IPL. Even so he was not picked for the T20I World Cup that year. The reason given was that he and CSA couldn’t agree terms, but Du Plessis wrote in his book that a disagreement he had had with Boucher during the Pakistan tour over the deployment of a nightwatch had come up during those negotiations: “… he said that he didn’t like the way I had challenged him”.

Whether that was a factor in Du Plessis’ omission wasn’t clear. But he also missed out on the T20I World Cup last year, when he was seventh on the IPL runscoring charts. What might be made of the fact that the two-year hiatus between ODIs he suggested to Smith expired in February this year?

Du Plessis played only eight matches for the Titans while Walter coached them from 2013/14 to 2015/16, but the two are believed to be on good terms and also to have had discussions since Walter was appointed to his current position in January. They are two of the most sensible people in the game — whatever happens from here it will not involve decisions made emotionally or immaturely, or which are informed by a grudge.

No doubt Du Plessis has learnt the lessons of the 2019 ODI World Cup in England, where it was left to him, as South Africa’s captain, and then coach Ottis Gibson to explain repeatedly why AB de Villiers wasn’t there. That was after the story broke during the tournament that De Villiers, who retired from international cricket in May 2018, had made a casual offer to return. It was spurned because, the selectors said, he was unwilling to play for South Africa leading up to the World Cup.

The saga helped derail Du Plessis’ team, who limped home having won only three of their eight completed games: the worst performance in South Africa’s eight World Cup campaigns. Du Plessis would not want the same kind of bombshell to detonate over the heads of Temba Bavuma and Walter in the throes of this year’s tournament.

Asked what his position on the issue was, Du Plessis told Cricbuzz on Friday: “I’ll talk about it more when the time is right. Now it’s not needed as I’m currently at the IPL.”

That’s not much. Indeed it could be the shortest reply the always articulate, languidly loquacious Du Plessis has yet given to any question he has been asked. But it is exactly the right thing for him to say right now. It’s not only at the crease that his timing is impeccable.

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The IPL’s dawdling, dazzling dozen foreign stars

Unlike the English Premier League, the Indian Premier League actually is Indian.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

WHAT could you do with USD2.5-million? A lot, no doubt. But we live in the real world — not the strange and magical bubble of unreality called the IPL, where money doesn’t seem to mean much unless it comes in numbers that have more zeroes attached than the rest of us have pairs of socks.

So many zeroes that a dozen foreign players fetched from afar and paid a total of INR205,500,000 — or USD2,574,563 at Thursday’s exchange rate — have yet to play a single match in this year’s tournament. A tournament, mind, which will be almost two-thirds complete after Thursday’s game between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders.

These arguably overpaid, unarguably underworked players range from Quinton de Kock, who has been earned USD825,638 sitting on the bench for Lucknow Super Giants, to Dasun Shanaka, who made USD61,154 from Gujarat Titans as a replacement for Kane Williamson. The New Zealander ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in the field during the tournament opener against Chennai Super Kings in Ahmedabad on March 31.

The others are Joe Root, Matthew Wade, Dewald Brevis, Chris Jordan — albeit his signing by Mumbai Indians as a replacement was announced as recently Sunday — Daniel Sams, Odean Smith, Finn Allen, Obed McCoy, Donovan Ferreira and Lungi Ngidi. Were it not for the fact that their ranks do not include a specialist spinner, that would be a decent squad of 12.

That none of them has been granted a single game seems outrageous considering the investment involved. Or maybe not. The most expensive player in IPL history, Sam Curran, was bought for this year’s edition by Punjab Kings for USD2,262,441 — a relatively marginal USD312,122 less than the combined fees of the dazzling but dawdling dozen.

Rajasthan Royals — Root, Ferreira and McCoy — and Gujarat — Shanaka, Smith and Wade — harbour half of these well-rested internationals between them. Lucknow have De Kock and Sams, and Brevis and Jordan are attached to Mumbai Indians. Allen is on Royal Challengers Bangalore’s books. Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Punjab Kings would seem to have made better use of their resources: they have no foreign bench-sitters. Again, maybe not — Punjab, KKR and SRH are all in the bottom half of the standings.

There’s another class of lesser spotted big-name internationals in the IPL. Glenn Phillips, one of only two century-makers at the T20 World Cup in Australia in October and November, has cracked the nod for Hyderabad just once. The other player to score a century on that stage, Rilee Rossouw, has played in four of Delhi Capitals’ nine games. Ben Stokes and Adil Rashid, key members of England’s triumph in that tournament, have featured in two matches each for Chennai and Hyderabad.

That every XI in the IPL cannot contain more than four foreigners is an obvious factor in this equation. But that is how it should be. There’s a clue in the first word of the league’s name. It is, after all, India’s own Premier League. It’s also Indian owned and, usually, played solely in India, the world’s biggest market for cricket. Accordingly of the 243 players currently in IPL squads 164 — 67.49% — are Indian.

Football’s English Premier League offers a cautionary tale of what happens when the numbers don’t make sense. English players account for 245 of the 680 names on the rosters of the 20 clubs. That’s little more than a third: 36.03%. It is also riddled with foreign ownership, much of it despised by supporters. The competition is England’s Premier League in name only.

The IPL’s foreign quota and what that does to the make-up and balance of the teams picked offer many reasons why some of the game’s most prominent international players are spectators at the tournament. So we study every line-up, just in case today is the day. Some, in those players’ home countries, will do so in the hopes that their compatriots’ names stay off the team sheet. Rather they come back fresh, that argument goes.

How many reasons are there to keep an eye on who plays, and who does not play, in the IPL? Not as many as 2.5-million, but enough to make it a compulsory exercise for cricket fans the world over.

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While Du Plessis dazzles, De Kock dwells the dugout

“Coupled with his captaincy, Faf becomes the most valuable player in the whole of the IPL.” – Adrian Birrell

Telford Vice / Cape Town

AMID the simmering and sometimes blatant hostility that swirled around Ekana Stadium in Lucknow on Monday, a thought might have been spared for Quinton de Kock. Especially while Faf du Plessis was reclaiming the orange cap.

But such subtleties were hit out of the park in a match that cost Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir their entire match fee and Naveen-ul-Haq half of his, all for actions more in keeping with the behaviour of petulant children than adult professionals. Royal Challengers Bangalore’s 126/9 proved enough to beat Lucknow Super Giants by 18 runs. In only five of the 1,003 IPL games played, and not since 2018, was a smaller total defended. Monday’s contest was febrile, as much because of conditions that asked plenty of batters, especially when facing spin, as the conduct of some of the more prominent figures involved.

De Kock watched his seventh consecutive match from the dugout as Du Plessis took his aggregate for the tournament to 466 in nine innings. De Kock, who again wasn’t picked for Wednesday’s washout against Chennai Super Kings in Lucknow, has yet to play in this year’s tournament. Du Plessis has yet to miss a game.

Add that to the range of contrasts that separates the two South Africans. Forget left-handed versus right-handed, or relentless attack versus the diligent building of an innings. Or the fact that De Kock turned 30 in December and Du Plessis will reach the end of his 30s in two Julys’ time.

One is a non-bowling wicketkeeper — in all the 664 matches he has played since provincial under-13 level, De Kock has turned his arm over for two overs. The other is an erstwhile leg spinner — Du Plessis has bowled 2,129.3 overs and taken 343 wickets at 26.06, 41 of them at first-class level. But he hasn’t bowled since March 2015, or 373 games ago. He stopped because of a chronic shoulder problem.

At press conferences it can be difficult to extract a quotable sentence from De Kock. It can be as challenging to stop the articulate thoughtfulness that pours readily from Du Plessis. Which is not to say De Kock is dim. Just that he is interested in what he is interested in, and that talking to the gathered press is evidently not among those interests. In October Du Plessis published an autobiography, “Faf: Through Fire”, that amounted to 193 pages and 145,540 words. Do not expect anything of the sort from De Kock.

On the field De Kock exudes cleverness. In an ODI at the Wanderers in April 2021 he fooled Fakhar Zaman by stationing himself behind the stumps and pointing at the opposite end of the pitch as the Pakistani dashed towards him in an attempt to complete a second run. De Kock created the impression that the ball was being thrown to the other end. It wasn’t, but Zaman couldn’t see that as the action was unfolding behind him. He slowed and turned to look over his shoulder — and the ball, hurled by Aiden Markram from long-off, clattered into the wicket to run out Zaman for 193. That ended the match with the visitors 17 runs shy of sealing the series. Devious? Probably. But there was no doubting De Kock’s quick, clear analysis of the situation and how to exploit it. Whatever else he is, he is not stupid.

“Quinton’s a proper professional,” Adrian Birrell, who shared a dressing room with De Kock and Du Plessis as South Africa’s assistant coach from 2013 to 2017, told Cricbuzz. “It might not look like it sometimes but he’s very serious about his cricket. But he’s snookered by Nicholas Pooran and Kyle Mayers in this year’s IPL. He missed the first two games because he was playing [World Cup Super League ODIs] for South Africa against the Netherlands. Pooran and Mayers started well, and it’s been difficult to change the side. Pooran offers them a keeping option and Mayers is an allrounder, so Quinton has struggled to get into the team.”

Only MS Dhoni and Dhruv Jurel had a higher strike rate in this year’s tournament than Pooran’s 190.68 going into Monday’s match. Mayers has made four half-centuries and is eighth among the leading runscorers. Both the West Indians have played in all nine of LSG’s games. The hip injury KL Rahul sustained in the field on Monday might be expected to secure De Kock gametime, but the issue is complicated by the quota for foreign players.

“Quinton will be champing at the bit to get an opportunity, but it shows the strength of the IPL,” Birrell said. “Because you can only play four internationals you’ve got very good players, other than Quinton, sitting on the bench. Iconic players like Joe Root also haven’t had a game yet.”

The former England captain has been on the outside looking in for all nine of Rajasthan Royals’ games. Dasun Shanaka, Matthew Wade and Lungi Ngidi are among those who have also not played a match. How would the downtime affect De Kock when, or even if, he is called into action? “He’s a very natural player and he adapts very quickly, so I would think he would just need a couple of nets and he’d be good to go,” Birrell said.

Du Plessis doesn’t have that problem. Thanks to the impact player rule a rib injury couldn’t keep him off the field in three games. In one of them, against Punjab Kings in Mohali on April 20, he scored 84 off 56. In another, against Rajasthan Royals at the Chinnaswamy three days later, he made 62 off 39. Du Plessis has cracked half-centuries in five innings, and his team have won four of six games with him as captain.

Of the three matches in which he was substituted in and out — when Virat Kohli returned to the captaincy — RCB won two, including their only consecutive successes, on the back of Du Plessis’ batting. When he was dismissed early, caught in the deep for 17 in the third over off fellow impact player Suyash Sharma in Bengaluru on Sunday, Kohli scored 54 off 37 but Kolkata Knight Riders won.

“Coupled with his captaincy, Faf becomes the most valuable player in the whole of the IPL,” Birrell said. “You wouldn’t think he’s at the peak of his powers at his age [38], but he is. This is the best he’s ever played.”

It’s also the most Du Plessis has ever been paid to play. The equivalent of USD856,000 he earned this year — which was also his fee in 2022 — is his biggest payday in the tournament and brings his total for 13 editions of the IPL to USD4.944-million. De Kock is on almost as good a wicket, making USD825,638 in 2023 and, in all IPLs, USD4.743-million.

But the comfort that brings won’t stop a player who hammered 100 off 44 two innings ago — in a T20I against West Indies in Centurion on March 26 — from fretting about when next he might take guard. Perhaps not until he is back in a South Africa shirt. De Kock can but hope that isn’t his fate.

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Why the IPL matters in South Africa

“Mostly watching the IPL.” – Rob Walter on what he’ll be doing for the next few weeks.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

“ONE more day with the dogs,” a wistfully smiling Aiden Markram said at the Wanderers as the sun set on April 9 after he was asked when he would be on his way to the IPL. Whether he meant he was running out of time to spend with his pets or his South Africa teammates — as in dawgs — wasn’t clarified.

Hours earlier Markram had scored 175 to power the South Africans to a comprehensive win in an ODI against the Netherlands. He said he would board a flight bound for India the next afternoon. Four days later he came down to earth with the bump in Lucknow when he drove at the first ball he faced in this year’s tournament — and Krunal Pandya’s delivery trimmed the outside of off-stump, sending the bails earthward.

Happily for Markram, Rob Walter would not have seen that. Also on April 9, South Africa’s white-ball coach said he and his family would spend the next week or so in the bush, where “I won’t have to talk to anybody except my wife and kids”. But Markram will hope Walter returned to civilisation in time to see his 21-ball 37 not out in Hyderabad on Sunday.

There is no doubt Walter is keeping a close eye on the tournament. Asked how he would spend his working hours until his squad go into camp to prepare to play five ODIs and three T20Is against Australia in August, Walter said, “Mostly watching the IPL.”

Regardless of differences in format and conditions, the IPL is an important barometer for measuring players’ form and evolution in the roles they are able to offer their international teams.

“The main thing is to make sure that each player has a clear directive in terms of what they’d like to get out of [the IPL] for South Africa,” Walter said. “It’s a great opportunity for them to play under pressure and to develop their skills. It’s a high level of cricket they’re playing all the time. So to be able to manage high pressure moments and do that well can only bode well for our team. I’ll be watching for that and seeing if the guys are imparting the same style of play we’re looking for them to do for their country.”

Walter will know that, after the first 18 games, the only South African batter among the top 10 runscorers is Faf du Plessis — who last played for the national team in December 2020. The only others in the top 50 are David Miller and Rilee Rossouw at Nos. 43 and joint 47. South Africa’s leading wicket-taker is Wayne Parnell, who took 3/41 in the only match he has played so far, while Marco Jansen earned an economy rate of 5.33 in his sole outing.

For Walter, and many South Africans, the performance of the teams their compatriots represent in the IPL matters little. How those individuals fare means far more. So the fact that Du Plessis took an unbeaten 79 off an attack that featured Mark Wood and scored 73 while facing, among others, Jofra Archer will have been noted.

Likewise that Parnell claimed two wickets in three balls, one of them Pandya’s. And that Jansen dismissed Matthew Short with his second legal delivery and went for runs in a second over that brought him the wicket of Jitesh Sharma. Also that 10 of the 16 runs he conceded in his three overs came when Sam Curran hit consecutive deliveries for six and four.

Walter is not alone in his watching brief. It’s a fair bet every national white-ball team coach will be glued to a screen until after the IPL final on May 28. They won’t only watch their own players — the tournament will be equally valuable for gathering intelligence on some of the stars in the opposing teams their sides will face in the coming months. And on how players, for and against, perform in the same conditions in which the ODI World Cup will be staged in October and November.

Not that the IPL’s overseas audience is limited to coaches. South Africans of a certain bent like to complain about the tournament — how it clutters players’ schedules and leads to overuse injuries, how it makes them choose money over the prestige of the supposedly higher level of international cricket; that sort of gumph.

But the outrage that followed the announcement on March 30 that, for the first time in IPL history, the event wouldn’t be broadcast on television in South Africa told a different story. That decision was rescinded less than 24 hours later — shortly before the opening ceremony — and the tournament is again being beamed into homes and sports bars countrywide.

The truth is South Africans care deeply about the IPL, but not in the same ways Indians might. Also that, unlike Indians, they don’t want to talk about it. And that, if you ask them, they’ll say they couldn’t give a damn. Do not be fooled.

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You can take the IPL out of India, but can you take India out of the IPL?

“Sachin was injured, Harbhajan got banned and Sanath didn’t want to do it.” – Shaun Pollock explains how he became an IPL captain.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

IS anything more Indian than the IPL? To some Indians that would be a provocation: yoga, Bollywood and richly varied cuisine, for a start. But, just as it would be arrogant to expect the world to know who or what adho mukha svanasana, Shah Rukh Khan or roti are, it would be naïve to assume everyone knows cricket existed in India before April 18, 2008.

Since that day, when Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kolkata Knight Riders took to the Chinnaswamy to play the first IPL match, the tournament has done for cricket what slicers have done for bread. Bread that comes in loaves, that is. So not roti. Nor indeed chapati, naan or paratha.

Just as true is that Bollywood blares with blingy bombast on screens far from India in the thrall of people who are anything but Indian, and that yoga has, in Westernised countries, been bastardised into exercise muddled with pseudo-spiritual mumbo jumbo, aromatherapy candles and incense and incongruous statues of buddha.

But while you can take the IPL out of India — as was done completely in 2009 and 2020 and partly in 2014 and 2021 — there is no taking India out of the IPL. Even its satellite tournament, South Africa’s SA20, is more Indian than South African. Indeed, the fact that all six of the SA20’s franchises are IPL-owned is an important part of its ability to attract sponsors, broadcasters and spectators.

The IPL has changed cricket in vast and irrevocable ways. So much so that it can be difficult to remember a time when these few weeks weren’t central to the global game’s annual calendar. Whether watching in person or from afar, it’s barely possible for cricketminded non-Indians to imagine anything more utterly and entirely Indian than the IPL.

Except that that has never been true. Foreigners have been intrinsic to the tournament since its inception. Its first winning captain was Shane Warne, its first player of the series Shane Watson, its first leading runscorer Shaun Marsh and its first leading wicket-taker Sohail Tanvir.

Admittedly, 2008 is the only year outsiders have swept those boards. But Indians have dominated only twice: MS Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar — both as player of the series and top batter — and Pragyan Ojha in 2010, and Dhoni, Harshal Patel — as player of the series and top bowler — and Ruturaj Gaikwad in 2021.

A foreigner has been named the IPL’s best player in a dozen editions of the tournament, or four times as often as an Indian. An outsider has scored more runs than any local 10 times compared to five by homegrown batters. The balance is closer in bowling, where foreigners have claimed the prize eight times and Indians seven.

Of the 405 players who were up for auction for this year’s IPL, 132 were not Indian. That’s just less than a third. The same was true of 42.15%, or 51 of 121, of the support staff — everyone from chief executives to lead and assistant masseurs to Gujarat Titans’ “throwdown specialist”, Ashok Sadh — named at the time of the auction.

But playing is at its core an individual pursuit, and the spotlight doesn’t linger on coaches when things go well or badly. Captaincy asks different questions of those blessed or cursed to be handed its chalice. Not only do they have to play well — better than their peers to escape being seen as keeping their places only because they are captains — they are expected to inspire others to play as well, if not better. They are also, at some level, coaches.

What might captaining a team on cricket’s biggest modern stage mean for those who have this potential greatness thrust on them — particularly if they are not Indian? It’s a question Shaun Pollock never should have been asked. He led South Africa in 119 matches across the formats, an ICC World XI in three ODIs and an Africa XI in two more, but he was an accidental IPL captain.

“It was in the first year, so I didn’t have a clue about any of the players and because of that I was a bit skeptical about captaining,” Pollock told Cricbuzz. “But Sachin was injured, Harbhajan got banned and Sanath didn’t want to do it. That was why I did it.”

Sachin Tendulkar, Mumbai Indians’ appointed captain, missed the first half of the inaugural IPL with a groin problem. Harbhajan Singh was given the job in Tendulkar’s absence, but suspended for the rest of the tournament for slapping his teammate, Sreesanth, after the third match. Mumbai lost all three games. Whether Sanath Jayasuriya really was unwilling to step into the breach is not known, but it seems clear Pollock made a positive difference: his team were beaten by 10 wickets by Deccan Chargers in his first game at the wheel, but they reeled off a hattrick of wins under him before Tendulkar arrived to preside over another three consecutive victories.

“The challenge is understanding the locals; knowing their skills and their strengths, and trying to understand how you can get the best out of them,” Pollock said of his IPL captaincy experience. “Communication can be difficult, but I think that’s changed a lot. International players who captain now really do understand their squad. They’ve probably been with them for a couple of years, so I don’t think that’s as big a challenge.

“Conditions were difficult to read. I relied on what the locals would say about pitches and how they might or might not play. Also, in those days there wasn’t much analysis. So I used to rely on what they knew about the other local guys we were playing against. These days, with all the coaches and advisory staff that teams have, the analysts give you a pretty good idea about where to bowl and what fields to set.”

JP Duminy led the then Delhi Daredevils in all 14 of their matches in 2015 and in two the next year. He piloted Delhi to only six wins, but for him leadership was about more than results. “One of the keys for me was investing in the culture of whichever country I was in,” Duminy, who also played in the PSL and the CPL, told Cricbuzz. “In India it was about trying to communicate with the local players as best I could, and trying to find a common cause in what we were playing for. Ultimately it’s to try and win the competition, but it’s also about investing in something deeper — understanding what makes local flavour tick, and forming and developing sound and sincere relationships. Leadership is about not necessarily needing to be in charge, but getting the best out of the people who are in your charge. That’s a significant quote I saw from [American author and inspirational speaker] Simon Sinek, which I think applies.”

Duminy saved some of his attention for the energy he could feel from the stands: “There are rituals that happen in India outside of playing that we need to understand; how passionate the fans are, and the importance of trying to find some way to connect with them. It can be overwhelming, but having the patience to do that is a big part in earning support for the team you’re playing for.”

No IPL has been without at least one foreign appointed captain. In 2011 half of the 10 teams were led by non-Indians. Two years later the foreigners were in the majority: they were in control of five of the nine sides.

But Indians have piloted teams to triumph 12 times, which is as it should be considering they had captained 87 of the 126 editions of the teams before this year. Of the internationals only Warne in 2008, Adam Gilchrist a year later and David Warner in 2016 know what winning the IPL as a captain feels like. Rohit Sharma has been there five times, Dhoni four times, Gautam Gambhir twice and Hardik Pandya once.

This year Warner, who is in charge of Delhi Capitals, has the chance to become the first foreigner to lead a team to the title twice. RCB have Faf du Plessis at the helm and the buck stops with Aiden Markram at Sunrisers Hyderabad. But Sharma and Dhoni are around and in search of yet more glory, and Pandya is back to try and repeat last year’s feat with Gujarat.

Is anything more Indian than the IPL? Maybe. But nothing anywhere in cricket is as magnificent.

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Bavuma brightens bleak Benoni

“You want to lead with authority. You want to say the right things, but you also want to do the right things.” – Temba Bavuma

Telford Vice / Cape Town

BENONI is bleak even when the sun shines. It didn’t for most of Friday, and the bleakness hardened into a monochrome meanness under gunmetal grey skies that whistled with a nasty north-westerly wind. Cricket weather it wasn’t. At least, not in South Africa. In the Netherlands? Maybe.

You didn’t need to know it was cold to know it was cold, even if you were watching on television from a warmer place. Fielders betrayed an abrupt reluctance as they stabbed their hands at the onrushing ball. They were watched by a light dusting not of snow but of 1,800 fans, not many of them without heavy jackets, blankets and beanies.

It says plenty that Benoni’s most prominent living natives — Hollywood’s Charlize Theron, Grace Mugabe, despised widow of Zimbabwe’s despot former president Robert Mugabe, and Charlene Wittstock, once an Olympic swimmer, now princess of Monaco — don’t live there anymore. Oliver Tambo, a contemporary, colleague and comrade of Nelson Mandela who would shudder to see what a wretched rabble their beloved ANC has become, had the misfortune not only to have lived in nearby Wattville — since renamed Tamboville — but also to be buried there alongside his wife, Adelaide Tambo; national heroes both.

Willowmoore Park is in keeping with its squat, unambitious, prosaic surrounds. It seems a waste that, in December 1948, Denis Compton took to this unlovely stage to score 300 in a session-and-a-half. Also that it is here that South Africa should have to come to take the first of their last two throws of the dice to qualify directly for this year’s men’s ODI World Cup. The constant threat of rain remained unfulfilled for long enough, and the Dutch didn’t do much to stop the South Africans from banking another 10 World Cup Super League (WCSL) points on Friday.

Vikramjit Singh and Max O’Dowd shared 58 before the visitors lost all of their wickets for 131 runs in 35.2 overs with Sisanda Magala and Tabraiz Shamsi claiming three each. Scott Edwards told a press conference that a significant chunk of the credit for that happening belonged to the visitors: “Everyone in our top six; I don’t think they got us out. Their better balls were actually missing, and we found ways to get ourselves out.”

South Africa reached their target of 190 in 30 overs with eight wickets standing, and with the unseparated Temba Bavuma and Aiden Markram making 102 of those runs off 69 balls. Bavuma finished 10 runs shy of what would have been a fourth century in his last eight Test and ODI innings. “It gives you confidence,” Bavuma said of his purple patch. “As a leader you want to be able to lead with authority. You want to be saying the right things, but you also want to be doing the right things.”

The home side will have a last chance to advance their WCSL tally against the same opponents at the Wanderers on Sunday. If the result is similar only an unlikely 3-0 sweep by Ireland of Bangladesh at Chelmsford in May will force South Africa to go to a qualifier in Zimbabwe in June and July. Should that befall Bavuma’s team they could tell Grace Mugabe, in person, that Benoni does not send its regards.

While Friday’s match was going through its motions, some 7,200 kilometres away, across the Indian Ocean and the equator, the scene couldn’t have been more different. Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad was lit up like Willowmoore Park will never be for the sold out opening match of the IPL. More than 100,000 people — around 56 times as many as braved Benoni’s boundaries — watched Gujarat Titans take on Chennai Super Kings in the warm embrace of an evening that followed a 28 degrees Celsius day. David Miller and Magala would have been there, too. Instead, as per CSA’s understandable orders, they were wrapping up in Benoni.

Cricketminded South Africans would have planned to keep an eye on both games. But, on Thursday, SuperSport shocked the nation by announcing it would not broadcast the IPL after “unsuccessful commercial discussions with the rightsholder”.

Cue outrage from would-be warriors behind their keyboards. What do you mean you’re not showing the IPL? You always have, along with what can seem like every smidgen of sport — important or relevant or far from it — in the world. Besides, with the state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation an unmitigated disaster of governance and delivery and everything else, what choice is there for sport-watchers who are no longer 12; or young enough to be able to hook up the dingle to the dangle to the dongle and latch onto a stream, legal or not.

These unfortunates seemed unable to understand the difference between the equivalent of the USD55 many of them pay monthly for the service’s premium package — expensive in South Africa but a pittance in global terms, considering the one-stop shop that is SuperSport — and the reality of the bidding process on the open market, and how that translates into what they see on their televisions. You get what you pay for. And sometimes you get more than what you pay for.

But, less than an hour before the start of the opening ceremony in Ahmedabad, came the happy news that, “following new conversations with the rightsholder”, the tournament would indeed be seen on the screens of more affluent South Africans. Thousands of keyboards groaned in relief — their hammerers were becalmed.

Normal service had resumed, off the field and on: suddenly no-one remembered November 6, when the Dutch put South Africa out of the T20 World Cup. Benoni is no-one’s idea of gracious Adelaide, but maybe it isn’t so bleak.

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CSA put country before club

“We weren’t given an option in any way.” – David Miller says CSA decided South Africa’s ODI players would miss the IPL start.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

DAVID Miller has admitted that Gujarat Titans were “really upset” with the decision that he and other likely members of South Africa’s ODI squad would miss the start of this year’s IPL in order to be available for two World Cup Super League (WCSL) matches against the Netherlands.

The games against the Dutch are scheduled for Benoni on March 31 and the Wanderers on April 2. The IPL starts with a game between Gujarat, the defending champions, and Chennai Super Kings in Ahmedabad on March 31.

South Africa probably need to win both ODIs to qualify directly for the World Cup in India in October and November. But the Titans will pay Miller USD380,000 for his services this year. What did they think of his absence for the opener?

“They were really upset,” Miller told a press conference in Potchefstroom on Monday. “It’s always a big thing playing in Ahmedabad, especially in an opening game against Chennai. I am a bit disappointed to be missing that, but to put on the green and gold has always been a huge privilege and honour. And we have got some work to do in those two games against Netherlands, so I think having a strong team — the best squad we can pick — is definitely the way forward. I will be missing one game so, whether I’m somewhat disappointed or not, the process has taken place.”

The same will apply to other South Africans on the books of IPL franchises. The squad to play the Dutch ODIs has yet to be named, but it is likely to include Miller along with Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen and Marco Jansen, who all play for Sunrisers Hyderabad, Delhi Capitals’ Anrich Nortjé and Lungi Ngidi, Mumbai Indians’ Tristan Stubbs and Dewald Brevis, Lucknow Super Giants’ Quinton de Kock, and Punjab Kings’ Kagiso Rabada. All 10 IPL sides will be in action before the South African contingent is able to leave for India.

A similar situation arose before the start of last year’s IPL, when Rabada, Ngidi, Jansen, Markram and Rassie van der Dussen chose to go to the tournament instead of play in a home Test series against Bangladesh. Then, CSA left the decision up to the players.

“We weren’t given an option in any way,” Miller said when he was asked who had made the call — meaning CSA, which has the right to refuse to release contracted players for franchise leagues, put their foot down in the national cause. “Be that as it may, we’ve got our best squad on the park and we’ve got a lot of work to do in those two games. So it will be nice to be able to focus on that,” Miller said.

He was freshly back in South Africa after helping Multan Sultans reach the PSL final in Lahore on Saturday, which Lahore Qalandars won by one run. That meant Miller missed the first two of South Africa’s ODIs against West Indies, which do not count for WCSL points.

The first, in East London on Thursday, was washed out and the Windies won the second, at the same venue on Saturday, by 48 runs. The series will end in Potchefstroom on Tuesday.

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