Reasons why this IPL is still not over
Yeah, so once it's going to be a long read. So skip if you have the attention span of a monkey. No hard feelings to you or me.
As the title says, I'll opine my point of view based on the whatever-cricket-knowledge I have.
For the last 2 years, we've been seeing teams go wham-bham-thank you ma'am in the beginning of the season. As the pitches slow down, the scores, run rate, bat swing, even the tempo slow down. The thing to note is, while other teams have big bonker hitters, they are so due to their destructive bat swing. Not calling any of them slogger, that's a harsh term, but you know what I'm saying right. So, as the pitches slow down, their hitting ranges will decrease faster than what ours would do. Not that we will turn the flip, but the differences won't be so glaring.
The next being, summers. As the season progresses, India starts facing harsher sun and soaring temperatures. Pitches would dry more, might even see them crumble due to the just concluded T20WC.
Combine them all three and we have the inventory to deal with it. Or atleast suffer less than other teams. Samson's technique will be suited for it. Gaikwad needs to learn not to let the captaincy affect his batting. It's a very bad space of mind that he's into. Urvil or Mhatre, whoever, can turnover an average PP into a good one. Brevis and Dube shall be the designated spin-bashers, and Sarfaraz with all his behind V scoring areas can exploit the death overs. MS can join and aurafarm whenever he wants. Maybe for the heartbeat of every guy like me, hit a few, 15-20 sixes. Okay sorry for drifting away.
The bowlers, if we're adding Madhwal in place of Khaleel, use him as a middle over enforcer along spinners. This is where we can utilise him the best. From what I've seen of Spencer Johnson in the BBL and Aussie colours, he is a better powerplay bowler than he is a death over specialist. We can use 2+1+1, or 3+1 as per conditions. Akeal and Noor need to pump up their game, and align with slowing pitches. We have a trump card, but they need to be in form. AK47 can continue firing as he is. Try to squeeze in an over of Dube, use his slower balls.
But now, the Achilles' Heel
The players have to be there to win it. And for the love of my God, CSK management please keep them alive. We lost Mhatre due to a complete management error, one that I never expected from a professional team like CSK. It's like taking your school kids to a picnic and forgetting them at the jungle. Thankfully we have Urvil Patel who can cover up for him. But such slipups are not affordable when we're down and out halfway through the tournament.
That's all. Just an old school CSK fanatic who's spent all his childhood keeping his chest pumped up in school just because CSK, my favorite, could bang the shit out of anybody they wanted, on any given day. Today's kids won't believe how emotions changed when we saw Jaddu getting caught off RP Singh and seeing it as a no-ball moments later. Just off topic, but hear me out. We could see ourselves getting humiliated by RCB classmates if we lost. Every single RCB kid screamed their lungs off when Jaddu was caught. And we heartbroken. They ran off thinking they'd won. Some even started mocking. Even before we could adjust ourselves to start defending our glory, the CSK dugout started cheering. The replies weren't defensive anymore. It was an all out bangbang.
Mad respect for whoever staying so long. Cheers.