Pacemen Basil Thampi (Lions) & Mohd Siraj (SRH) have been impressive and it won't be surprising to see them making the India A team soon
Gujarat Lions' Basil Thampi (right) and Andrew Tye celebrate the wicket of RCB's dangerman Chris Gayle in Bangalore on Thursday. Pic/PTI
The 10th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has reached its halfway stage and while Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders have looked the two best teams by some margin, there's some serious grappling expected for the third-fourth slots. Pune's rise and Hyderabad's issues with illness and injury have opened up the league further.
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Delhi look like one win away from finding momentum and Punjab isn't too far from stitching a couple of wins together. Gujarat Lions are the only team that looked fairly strong on paper, but haven't managed to create any momentum thus far. Let's have a look at a few trends emerging in this year's IPL.
T20 is a bowler's game
The common thread in the top two teams in the league is their depth in the bowling department. Both Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders have resisted the temptation to play an extra batsman for a bowler.
Whenever they made changes to their playing XI, they made sure that they fielded five proper bowlers with an additional bowling option to take care of someone having a bad day.
In the early years of T20 cricket, most teams thought packing the team with batsmen was key to success but that's changing now.
T20 is a 120 balls game and therefore, you seldom require the services of more than six batsmen, but irrespective of how good your bowlers are, you need five bowlers in every game.
Lesser-knowns to the fore
Nitish Rana has done so well that team's captain Rohit Sharma has to make peace with batting at No 4, for it's criminal to move the best in-form batsman lower down the order for captain's preferred batting spot. The same is the case with Rahul Tripathi for RPS.
Sunrisers Hyderabad's Mohd Siraj (left) celebrates the wicket of Delhi Daredevils' Sanju Samson with wicketkeeper Naman Ojha on April 19. Pic/AFP
Basil Thampi and Mohd Siraj are the two quick bowlers who've impressed one and sundry, and it won't be surprising that both start featuring in India A teams soon.
Umpiring in the spotlight
Umpiring is at its best when it goes relatively unnoticed. The moment it becomes the central part of cricket discussions around a tournament, you know that it hasn't been of very high standard.
This year's IPL has seen some really ordinary umpiring, which in turn has raised the issue of the standards of homegrown Indian umpires. It's not that overseas umpires haven't erred but it's also a fact that Indian umpires have erred more often.
Even since the BCCI has started covering every first-class game with six stationary cameras, the umpiring standards have improved in the domestic circuit but the ordinary standard displayed by the few handpicked (who are supposedly best Indian umpires) in the IPL shows that there are miles to be covered still.
The ambience of the ground, the pressure of the game and stature of the players have the potential to influence the decision-making of the on-field umpire. World-class umpiring is necessary to make the tournament world-class and currently, the standards are bringing down the league's stature.
Champions Trophy in mind?
Amongst the known performers, some have shown more than the rest. And interestingly they happened to be ones who are in line with India selection for the Champions Trophy.
KKR's Manish Pandey's brilliant run must have served as a timely reminder to the selection committee. And with both Chahal and Kuldeep doing well, it'll be interesting to see who gets the nod. Bhuvneshwar has all but sealed his place along with Bumrah. While the focus is on making their respective teams win the IPL, there's an intriguing story playing out on the side.
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