Tuesday 27 April 2010

The IPL is over....enter the World Twenty20

The Indian Premier League is finally over after the Chennai Super Kings beat the favourites Mumbai Indians in the final by 22 runs. It seems weird though that the Mumbai Indians were the better team over the course of 14 games for every club yet they still have to play against the other top 3 in a mini knockout competition at the end despite the fact they won the league by 4 points.

Suresh Raina was the hero with an unbeaten 57 which meant that the Chennai Super Kings were able to get up to 167 and despite Sachin Tendulkars 48 they were restricted to 146-9, although they did let Suresh Raina get away with a few chances early on, and if they had taken his wicket then it could have been a totally different game. All this came after a good opening stand between Murali Vijay and Matthew Hayden who were probably the best opening pair in the competition.

Fear not if you are a fan of Twenty20 cricket though as this Friday the world 20/20 tournament begins out in the Caribbean. Although if you are like me then you are probably bored with the crash, bang and wallop version of cricket and are eagerly looking forward to the start of the test matches next month.

With the top teams on the international stage all fighting it out for the world championships though it will be interesting to see how Afghanistan go in the competition as they are relatively new to the world stage and it will be good to see how well they cope with the pressure. It will also be interesting to see if someone other than India and Pakistan will be able to dominate the competition for a change.

Although as the Indian Premier League has a lot of the Indian youth players and a lot of the senior side as well playing it is easy to see just why the likes of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka do well at the world events. So with the competition kicking off this Friday at 5pm (England time) all attention will be on the teams battling it out for supremacy.