Big names? Big deal. How not to win cricket’s most glittering prize

The IPL is not a telephone directory. It takes more than names and numbers to win it.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma, Kane Williamson, Shreyas Iyer, Mayank Agarwal and Rishabh Pant walk into a bar, where they see Stephen Fleming, Mahela Jayawardene, Tom Moody, Brendon McCullum, Anil Kumble and Ricky Ponting.

Fancy meeting you here, one says to another. What’s up? That some of the biggest names in cricket have been lumped together in a bar tells us they are not in Ahmedabad, which is in the dry state of Gujarat. It’s just before 8pm (IST) on Sunday. This coming Sunday …

The televisions in the noisy, crowded room are, of course, turned on — the IPL final is about to start. And none of those big names are involved, because they are the captains and coaches of the six teams who were shut out of the tournament’s play-off stages. Played 14, didn’t win enough of them, thanks for coming.

Thereby hangs a puzzle, because the six sides — Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians, Sunrisers Hyderabad, Kolkata Knight Riders Punjab Kings and Delhi Capitals, and the previous iterations of some of them — have won a dozen of the 14 completed editions of cricket’s most glittering prize between them, and only Punjab and Delhi are without a title. Only in the first two IPLs, which were won by Rajasthan Royals and Deccan Chargers, were one of those half-dozen outfits not triumphant. Only in 2009, when Royal Challengers Bangalore went down to Deccan Chargers in the final, have one of them not reached the decider.

How, given all that, could it be that not one of those teams — particularly CSK and Mumbai, who have earned nine championships combined, or almost two-thirds of all the IPL silverware on offer — have made it to the business end this year? The other side of that question is how four sides who have just one title to show for their efforts — Rajasthan’s win in the inaugural 2008 competition — are the only ones left in the race this year?

It only adds to the intrigue that two of the final four, Gujarat Titans and Lucknow Super Giants, are new franchises in their first campaigns and haven’t had the chance to win anything. The captains and coaches still in the running, when compared to the stature of those who have fallen by the wayside in 2022, is part of this riddle: Gujarat’s Hardik Pandya and Ashish Nehra, Rajasthan’s Sanju Samson and Kumar Sangakkara, LSG’s KL Rahul and Andy Flower, and RCB’s Faf du Plessis and Sanjay Bangar, who has Mike Hesson at his elbow as director of cricket. There are giants of the game among them, certainly, but none taller than several of the 12 gathered for a mythical last IPL supper in a bar far from Ahmedabad.

Add some of the names attached in various capacities to the teams who haven’t made it, and the mystery deepens still. We’re talking about figures of the stature of Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan, Shane Bond, Michael Hussey, Eric Simons, Shane Watson, Ajit Agarkar, Pravin Amre, Simon Katich, Muttiah Muralitharan, Dale Steyn, Brian Lara and Jonty Rhodes. On the other side of that equation, Lasith Malinga, Paddy Upton, Gautam Gambhir and Gary Kirsten are in the dugouts of the sides who are still in the fray.

Might money buy success? None of the 10 franchises reached their salary cap of Rs90 crore (USD11.9-million) at the player auction in March. Mumbai and SRH came closest at Rs89.9 crore. But Mumbai were the first team to be eliminated, finishing bottom of the standings with four wins and 10 losses. SRH, who lost eight games, ended eighth. Before we think that decides the dollar debate, consider that the four teams who are still standing spent between Rs89.85 and Rs88.55 at the auction. Another four shelled out between Rs87.05 and Rs81.55. So, among the six teams who failed to make the play-offs were the four with the smallest salary bills.

Something similar is true of football’s English Premier League, in which Manchester City emerged victorious over Liverpool by a single point in the final standings, which were settled on Sunday. In March, no club had spent more on players than the £355-million committed to that cause by Man City. Liverpool doled out £41-million less than the champions, and between £29-million and £9-million less than Chelsea and Manchester United — who finished third and sixth. But the top six teams in the standings were also the top six spenders on players.

None of the five most expensive players at the IPL auction were bought by franchises that remain in the hunt. Of the 10 most handsomely paid, only RCB’s Harshal Patel — who sold for Rs10.75 crore — Lockie Ferguson and Avesh Khan — who were bought for Rs10 crore each by Gujarat and LSG — are still in action.

An important part of the explanation for what may seem inexplicable is that players change teams. For instance, Gujarat captain Pandya was part of Mumbai’s champion sides in 2015, 2019 and 2020. Du Plessis, RCB’s skipper, was involved in CSK’s success in 2018 and 2021 — when he scored a 59-ball 86 in the final against KKR. 

Also, quality will out. Accordingly, the four finalists provided at least five and as many as eight of the leading 10 performances in terms of top run-scorers and wicket-takers, highest individual scores, best bowling in an innings, best economy rate in an innings and best economy rate in the tournament.

Among them were some of the IPL’s most enduring memories. Quinton de Kock’s screaming 70-ball 140 not out — the highest score this year — for LSG against KKR on Wednesday was a thing of wonder. Rajasthan’s Jos Buttler hammered half of the six centuries made in 2022, and across just six innings. Consistently bristling wrist spin earned Rajasthan’s Yuzvendra Chahal 26 wickets and made him the IPL’s most dangerous bowler. Happily, those stars have not shined for the last time this year.

But the IPL is not a telephone directory: it takes more than names and numbers to win it. It needs, among many other factors, belief, nerve, luck and bonding between players who, after the final, might not see each other — except as opponents — until next year. It’s difficult to know when you’ve nailed down that last element, but sometimes it can be read between the lines.

It’s there in comments attributed to Sal Kishore on Gujarat’s website: “It’s been amazing being here, with Ashu pa [Nehra] and Hardik. Ashu pa has made sure that everybody feels so secure in this team. Even when I was playing the 12th game of the season, I still felt like I need to contribute something for the team; not like I’ve been left out or something like that. We’ve all felt so secure and a lot of credit needs to be given to the both of them making the environment like that.”

And in what Rahul had to say about LSG teammate Mohsin Khan: “He’s been brilliant. I played with him in the nets first time a month ago, and I didn’t want to face him. Seriously — he was sharp. He’s scary at times in the nets. It’s not just the pace, he has a good brain, and skill as well.”

Even Virat Kohli isn’t immune. The former India captain is fading into the twilight of a great career, but his sentiments on Sunday, after RCB secured fourth place by dint of Mumbai beating Delhi Capitals, spoke of someone who is raging hard against the dying of the light: “It has been wonderful that I have got so much support in this edition. I am forever grateful to all the love that I have never seen before.”

More evidence of strong unity was to be seen in a video posted on Rajasthan’s social media feeds of their players keeping, for the most part, their composure and their humour intact on a jarring, strangely foggy, storm-struck flight from Mumbai to Kolkata for their qualifier against Gujarat on Tuesday.

There was visible relief on the Royals’ faces when the aircraft landed safely. How many of them might have headed straight for the nearest bar to calm their nerves? And who would they have found there?

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Oh to be in England now that football is here

Having been in a pub in Manchester trying not to laugh while Man United were getting their backsides kicked, I didn’t want to be around to see Mancunians’ inhumanity to Mancunians.

Times Select

TELFORD VICE in London

THERE’S a pub down the road here in London called the Dundee Arms, a proper East End boozer and a fine place to watch football. Even if you don’t really like football.

Get there less than 20 minutes before kick-off and you won’t get a seat. But there are three screens, plenty of standing room on the worn wooden floor, and not too many pillars and poles to spoil the view.

The beer tastes like something, and it damn well should: a pint costs the equivalent of R104.52 in Thursday’s money. Food? Toasted cheese, take it or leave it.

One of the bartenders is a beanpole of a bloke in a Mohican and earrings and clothes from the 1980s. Another, a skinhead, divides his time between the pub and working as a receptionist at a nearby yoga studio.

On the wall above the bar is a painting of a man, fists raised, who may or may not have been Daniel Mendoza — a bareknuckle boxer who lived a short walk away on Paradise Row in the 1700s. He invented the jab and the sideways step, and was reputed to be the first jew to talk to King George III.

Those were the days, apparently. But there I was on another day — April 9 this year — to see Man City beat Spurs 1-0 in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final, and five days later to see Liverpool beat Chelsea 2-0 in the Premier League, and three days after that to see City win the second leg of the quarter-final 4-3 but for Spurs to advance on the away goals rule.

If you’re a football fan you’ll know that I’ve missed a fair few games at the Dundee Arms in the past few weeks. You should also know that here in the trenches of the press there are only so many pints you can afford at R104.52 a pop. Besides, it’s not safe.

On April 9 I thought I might die there with “Mo Salah! Mo Salah! Flying down the wing!” thundering through my head. Eight days later I again thought I might die, this time when Fernando Llorente’s hip was ruled to have more to do with  

with the ball ending up in City’s net than his arm. Minutes after that, the end felt near again, and with Raheem Sterling’s look of shock and disgust at having his late strike ruled out for offside by VAR as my last memory.

The Dundee Arms is in a building of a certain age and condition, and it seemed it could easily have come crashing down in the mad moments after Mohamed Salah calligraphed a goal of arresting beauty to put Chelsea out of their misery.

Who knew there were so many Liverpool supporters in the East End of London? Who knew they could jump so high, repeatedly, in celebration? Who knows how many of them were actually Chelsea haters?

An exponentially bigger explosion of ecstasy accompanied Sterling being denied the glory of putting City in the semis because a pitchside gizmo said Sergio Agüro was offside. And he was. Even Pep said so: “The offside is offside.”

The English are weird. Invite them to a wedding and they stand around not looking at each other, even though they all know each other, until the DJ plays an awful song that they all know worryingly well and can sing at each other in some kind of celebration of their mutual recognition of awfulness. Ask them to vote on whether they want to remain part of the most successful peacemaking project in human history — albeit that the European Union has been hijacked by neoliberalism — and they get it badly wrong and spend years squabbling about whether or not they have got it wrong.

But put them in a pub where there’s footy on the telly, beer in the taps and cheese toasties on offer and they are suddenly as happily human as the rest of us. Which was why I didn’t go to the Dundee Arms on Wednesday to watch the Manchester Derby.

That’s too much humanity in one small, heaving place for me, and who knows where that humanity has been? Indeed, whether we can call what slithers to London from oop frozen bloody north human enough to be put into the same biological bracket as even Nigel Farage, the right-wing Brexit nutter wonderfully described in the Observer the other week as a “nicotine-stained man-frog”, is not at all certain. Whatever. Having experienced the surreality, in 2017, of being in a pub in Manchester trying not to laugh while United were getting their backsides kicked, I didn’t want to be around to see Mancunians’ inhumanity to Mancunians.

Daniel Taylor of the Guardian was not so lucky. He actually had to go rat-infested Old Trafford, where rain tips down onto spectators through the roof of the Sir Bobby Charlton Stand, to report on the match.

“Every season there is always one game in the title race when the team who are going to win the Premier League now it is going to be their year,” Taylor wrote. “One game when everything turns in their favour, all the hard work comes together and the supporters can think it is going to be a season to cherish.

“For Manchester City, was this that night? It certainly felt that way even if they still have to negotiate a tricky assignment at Burnley on Sunday before closing their season with a home game against Leicester and a trip to Brighton. City have made it 11 league wins in a row and if they can extend that sequence to 14 there will be nothing Liverpool, in second place, can do about it. No wonder there was such jubilation at the final whistle from the players in blue.”

In the same paper, Barney Ronay, who writes brilliantly about football and everything else because he writes about everything else except the football, had it thus: “Not even close. Not even close to being close. If there is an accurate measure of Manchester City’s domestic dominance over the past two seasons, and more specifically that combined 50-point lead over the creaky 1990s tribute act from across the way, it is perhaps the sight of Old Trafford at the final whistle of this room-temperature 2-0 derby victory.

“As the home crowd filed out in added time you could see the bones of this ground open up, its clanky iron clavicles exposed to the air. The only noise came from the sky blue corner where City’s fans sang ‘this city is ours’ and — a little prematurely: the bigger test of Burnley away is yet to come — a few late rounds of ‘Campeones’.”

What was it like down the Dundee Arms? I don’t want to know.