Get up, stand up!

LSG’s Yash Thakur (centre) celebrates the wicket of Punjab Kings’s Jitesh Sharma with teammates in Mohali on Friday. Pic/PTI

The Tata IPL enters the second month after an exciting first half where some of the closest last ball, last over finishes were seen in the history of the IPL. What the latter half of the first month has shown is that teams batting first are winning most of the matches, dew or no dew. Most captains prefer to insert the opposition since they are worried about the dew factor particularly if spin bowling is their strength.

Scoreboard-pressure's impact

What however has been seen is that scoreboard-pressure is making even teams well placed while chasing, suddenly get the heebie geebies and collapse and lose the game. No better example of this than when the Lucknow Super Giants seemed to freeze even as they saw the close finishing line and ended up well short of the score put up by the Gujarat team.

What was impressive was the way they picked themselves up for the next match and smashed 257 runs and went on to win comfortably. As the race for the qualifying places hots up, the margins of victories and losses also become important for the net run-rate factor that could kick in. It is now that teams need all their players available so that they can put up the best combination depending on the pitch, opposition and whether it's an afternoon game or evening contest.

Injuries are part and parcel of sport, so players not being available for that is totally understandable. National duty also is something that franchises will not object to as the players would have informed them before the tournament started. However, players leaving the tournament for weddings and births is tough to understand.

If they have informed the franchise before the tournament starts and the franchise has given them the go ahead then it's perfectly fine, but if it's sprung on the franchise at the last moment then it's palpably unfair and the IPL must ensure these players never participate in it again.

An emergency situation is understandable for players to leave mid-way through a tournament. But if it's something which the player knew about and the franchise not been informed about before the event starts, then the IPL must ensure such players don't come up for auction again. It would have been great if the IPL had applied a similar approach to those players, who having been bought at their base price pulled out after the auction citing bubble fatigue as an excuse. How come the bubble fatigue factor kicked in only after the player was picked at the base price that the player himself had decided? If he was disappointed at not getting more, then he should have had a higher base price and then seen if he got picked by any franchise.

The players who pulled out also were those who came in the last stages of the auction after being unsold at the earlier stages when their names came up. That's a bit of a joke too, where the same names keep coming up again and again. Once unsold, should be unsold for that auction and some other standby names from outside the list given should come up for the franchises to choose from.

Heartwarming gesture

It was wonderful to hear on Sachin's 50th birthday that the Sharjah Cricket Stadium had decided to name a stand after him after his stupendous performances there. Similarly, the Sydney Cricket Ground naming the player entry gates after him and Brian Lara, another batting genius, is heartwarming too. Well done, Sharjah and Sydney ground authorities.

Professional Management Group