Par score by the team batting first. Top three batsmen do their job. No Pyrotechnics. Then the bowlers step in and take responsibility. Restrict opposition to 147. And win the game.
Are we witnessing phase 2 of the league unfolding?
ASHOK’s FIVE muses over the Match No 11 – DC vs SRH in the IPL 2020.
One of the most intriguing things about the game of cricket is how the on-paper weak team does something that allows them to take charge and win on the filed of play. On any given day, you would look at the Delhi Capitals line-up and say they have to win. But the opposite happens. Then you go and invent words like the ‘glorious uncertainties’ of cricket. I think it has to do with a team playing to its strengths or in line with its limitations and that’s what
SRH did. Kane Williamson with his strike rate of 125 does not look like a T20 player but he came in and delivered what was expected of him. Sometimes this is all that matters.
With the wickets beginning to deteriorate, are we seeing the league moving into Phase 2. Is 160 now a par score or a winning score? This was perhaps the first match where the ‘formula’ did not really come into play although Bairstow did go on to score a half-century. There was no power hitting, no flurry of sixes on display. This was the brand of cool, calculated cricket that won the team the match.
Kane Williamson’s brand of batting is interesting. He came in at a time when you would expect a big hitter to emerge from the dug-out and kept the innings going and the score ‘ticking over’. Would Dilip Vengsarkar and Mohinder Amarnath be the role models for this brand of cricket were they to play T20s?
Finally, Rashid Khan came out of the shadows and delivered a fantastic piece of crafty bowling. His numbers of 3 for 14 in 4 overs tells the story. A case of ‘settling in’ before moving into top gear?
Back to my favourite piece about young talent. It was wonderful to see T Natarajan, an uncapped player getting picked ahead of the India players and delivering with his ‘old-fashioned yorker’. Natarajan emerged from the Tamil Nadu Premier league from where he was picked up by SRH. As Sanjay Manjrekar puts it “Good things happen to good people”
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