Last week, the Indian Premier League (IPL) carnival came to an end. Despite the formidable challenge of hosting a tournament during a pandemic – living in a bio-bubble, with virtually no practice, absolutely no crowds – it was an exciting, tense, and utterly fascinating two months of cricket. These were the highlights for me.
This IPL belonged to Thangarasu Natarajan and Varun Chakravarthy, latecomers who simply did what they loved with commitment and determination for years without any significant return and now find themselves, at 29, bathed in the IPL spotlight and on the cusp. to make his debut for India. It’s the kind of story that would feel like a cliché in a movie, but is gleefully inspiring in real life.
Natarajan’s mother used to run a roadside chicken shop and his father worked in a power loom factory in Tamil Nadu. Natarajan was the local tennis ball hero we’ve all known growing up. He only kept his first real cricket ball at 20, in the lowest rung of the cricket division in his state. Within three years, he was making his Ranji debut without ever having played age group cricket. In 2015, a year after his debut, he was reported for suspicious action, the kind of thing that usually destroys a career. But he returned a year later with a reformed action, playing in the hyperlocal Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL). In 2017 he was signed by Kings XI Punjab. Next year, elbow surgery took him down. In 2020, he played every IPL game for his new team Sunrisers Hyderabad and became a sensation for his ability to throw the Yorkers six of six balls in a final. He even got one to crash into the stumps of AB de Villiers. He has been chosen for the T20 team from India to Australia.
Chakravarthy, just five years ago, had almost abandoned his cricket career. The former tennis ball sprinter was working as an architect in Chennai after his dreams were derailed by injury. Then he began to transform into a spinner. He started making inroads with TNPL in 2017. In 2018, he was making his Ranji debut and was picked up by an IPL franchise. In 2019 he was having a bad debut season in the IPL and his team let him go. In 2020 he was picked up by Kolkata Knight Riders, made his first five-course ride, against Delhi in Sharjah, and was chosen for the India team heading to Australia (he has since withdrawn due to injury and was replaced by Natarajan) . Let me out of this ride, I have vertigo!
There are other performances at the IPL that give me reason to make great predictions. I think Devdutt Padikkal will be a big star in all formats for India, just like Ruturaj Gaikwad.
I don’t think there is a bowler like Jasprit Bumrah right now. Ok, Jofra Archer too, but Boom is more, bigger, better. That pace, that precision, that action that makes it so hard for hitters to find their lines of sight; Add to that twenty-below-zero composure in the most difficult stages of a match and a cricket brain that’s as sharp as the ball on the back of the length that pitches bubbling past the batters’ ears.
I also think Ricky Ponting is as brilliant a coach as he was as a player and captain. There will come a time when he will once again make the Australians an invincible force.
And I think that while we may regret the end of the MS Dhoni era, where there is a huge gap, there are also great possibilities. Between Wriddhiman Saha, Ishan Kishan, Rishabh Pant, and Sanju Samson, there is much joy in store for India as we search for our next goalkeeper-hitter for all seasons.
Finally, and this prediction is not great as it should have happened by now and it’s a shame it hasn’t: I think when the BCCI deems it appropriate to organize a proper women’s IPL instead of a totemic “T20 Women’s Challenge” It will be the next big thing in the world of cricket.
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