Sunday, April 27, 2008

Obviously shocking

The Indian Premier League T20 tournament is going great guns! I seriously am not interested in the tourney as its hard to not applaud a sehwag slog or a dhoni catch just because they are playing against the Bangalore Royal Challengers. This being said, I find myself spending a good 1-2 hours daily watching live action of IPL and this is exactly the reason why this tournament has become such a big success.

One thing that has come good out of this tournament is the obvious shock that the old guard does not fit into the new scheme of things. Dhoni was right!! There is no place for a Dravid or Laxman or Ganguly in this form of the game. Sachin has not played a single match, else I think he too would have been a failure, though he is the only one who has even a slight chance of success. Each one of these stalwarts is more of a liability in their team, creating batting order chaos and nothing more. Imagine Misbah-ul-haq sitting out of the Bangalore team or Herschelle Gibbs sitting out of the Hyderabad team or Gayle/Brad Hodge not in the playing 11 for Kolkata. Look at who from India is performing well... its rohit sharma, its uthappa, its sehwag, its dhoni, maybe even yuvraj. Basically, the new guard is doing the job and justifying why Dhoni took the bold decision (and all the flak) to drop dravid first and then ganguly from the one day squad.

I hope this tournament lays to rest the otherwise constant crib of each of these states on why their star player is not part of the ODI or T20 squad!

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