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.

IPL Reaches the Semis

The Indian Premier League has finally reached the Semi Final stages and after a lot of games, ending with the most boring game (well it was a dead rubber) and we have the final four teams that are battling it out for the two places in the final. It has finally come down to Mumbai Indians, Chennai SuperKings, Deccan Chargers and Bangalore Royal Challengers.

It was quite a surprise that the Delhi Daredevils, who were in a fantastic position going into their last 3 games, didn't make it. Boasting a squad that included Warner, Sehwag, Gambhir, Collingwood and Karthik they lost a large portion of their later games which saw them fall out of the running of the semi finals on the net run rate.

So with Mumbai Indians Vs Royal Challengers Bangalore and Deccan Chargers Vs Chennai SuperKings all happening within the next couple of days one would assume that the final would be won by the winners of the Mumbai Bangalore game but whoever gets through in the other semi final will have a chance to upset the odds and walk away with the trophy.

With the Mumbai Indians looking so good when they have their full squad out they are the overwhelming favourites with the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Dwayne Bravo and Harbajhan Singh they have been the front runners all the way through and won 10 out of their 14 games to finish 4 points clear of anyone else at the end of the group stage.

However with the players having to fly almost straight out to the Caribbean to play in the world twenty20 which starts at the end of this month, there is a lot of panic as the flights are still not working 100% and people like Paul Collingwood are unable to fly back to England to meet up with the squad before we fly out to the West Indies.

Indian Premier League

With the English county season just beginning and the fact that the England team are currently on an off period before the world Twenty20 starts I've been forced to get my cricket fix from the Indian Premier League and it's been a good watch lately especially as it seems as if any team no matter where they are positioned in the table can beat anyone else.

The Mumbai Indians seem to be the team to beat especially with the fact that there captain Sachin Tendulkar has been in such fantastic form and with him being backed up by quality bowlers such as Harbajhan Singh it's easy to see why they are at the top of the table and are probably going to be one half of the finalists.

My personal favourites and the ones that I am tipping to meet the Mumbai Indians in the final is the Delhi Daredevils who boast a fantastic team including David Warner, Paul Collingwood, Virinder Sehwag and their captain Gautam Gambhir. The only problem with these is it seems as if at times both Warner and Sehwag fail then they seem to be stuck for runs, however they are still in a good position coming into the final stages of the competition.

The Deccan Chargers are the defending champions and with a batting line up boasting captain Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds and Herschelle Gibbs they should be doing a lot better than they have been so far. It seems that their bowling just is not up to the same standards as some of the others and despite some good wins at times they've lost far too many games that they should have won and therefore are languishing in mid table.

One of my favourites before the tournament started were the Kings XI Punjab which includes the likes of Ravi Bopara, Kumar Sangakarra, Mahela Jayawardena and Yuvraj Singh but unfortunately despite probably one of the best batting line ups in the competition they are still near the bottom of the table as they just haven't fired at all.

So as we move into the final few games of the league competition before the top 4 play off for the semi-finals and final it's definitely all to play for and the winner of any Mumbai Indians and Delhi Daredevils game will probably end up being the winners.

England 2-0 Bangladesh

Well it wasn't overly surprising that England left the test match series against Bangladesh with a 2-0 series win and I am going to rate each of the 12 players that played on how I thought they performed over the course of the series.

Alastair Cook - Had a good series with the bat and without a doubt will be the next captain of the team when Andrew Strauss is out of the way. Scored a brilliant hundred on the final day to help England win the second test. (Rating: 8/10)

Michael Carberry - Only played in the first test and unfortunately for him he couldn't get the big hundred that would stop the selectors dropping him after this test. Probably a one test wonder. (Rating: 4/10)

Jonathan Trott - Had a pretty poor run with the bat scores wise, but was also unfortunately prone to weird dismissals, not to mention he was given out caught off his helmet, will hopefully get more runs this summer when Bangladesh visit here. (Rating: 6/10)

Kevin Pietersen - Played a good innings to help in the final run chase to finish it off with captain Cook also scored a composed 99. Shame he didn't get the hundred he was looking for but some good signs for ahead. (Rating: 7/10)

Paul Collingwood - Had a rarity of a thing, a bad series. It is not often that he gets either no runs or wickets but he batted quite ordinarily at most times and he wasn't available to bowl. Expecting more from him this Summer. (Rating: 4/10)

Ian Bell - Finally showed us exactly what he could do and got the monkey off his back by making a hundred in trying conditions and without any of his teammates making one. Hopefully he will keep it up this year and into the Ashes. (Rating: 8/10)

Matt Prior - Good with the gloves in the first test but lost it a bit in the second test. Definitely still a good batsmen and without a doubt a team player, as even when he is going well he thinks about the team before his own situation. (Rating: 6/10)

Tim Bresnan - Had a fantastic series and some good runs and wickets and should have had his first test match hundred if it was not for a rush of blood to the head. A fantastic prospect and there is no doubt that if we want to play 5 bowlers he can easily bat at number 7. (Rating: 8/10)

Graeme Swann - Man of the series without a doubt. 10 Wickets in the first game and some good bowling in the second means that Swann (who is ranked the number 2 bowler in the world) gets my man of the series award and he was brilliant throughout both test matches and bowled a lot of overs. (Rating: 9/10)

Stuart Broad - Had a quiet series, unfortunately he is going through a bad patch with the bat but his bowling is still good its just unfortunate that the pitches really didn't offer a lot of assistance but he still bowled well and got some key wickets. (Rating: 5/10)

Steven Finn - Wrong place to try and play him, he should never have been given a debut on pitches that would have no bounce or movement. Definitely one for the future though he might want to forget about this tour for now. (Rating: 3/10)

James Tredwell - Took a stunning catch after coming on as sub in the first test before he got his chance in the second. Bowled well in both innings and took some key wickets. He should have played in the first test instead of Finn. (Rating: 6/10)

England put under Pressure and Australia beat New Zealand

The second test match between Bangladesh and England has finally shown us that Bangladesh can play good test match cricket and compete against some of the top teams in the world at this format of the game. It was nice to see them get big runs in the first innings, although that wasn't helped by the fact that England allowed their tail to keep piling on the runs.

After a good innings Bangladesh walked away with a very competitive 419 and things were going well for them when England collapsed to 174-4 before Ian Bell proved that he can score runs when the team needs them the most as he compiled a composed 138 and with good knocks from both Matt Prior and Tim Bresnan ensured that England finished on 496 all out.

Without a doubt England are now back on top but it will be a good test of Bangladesh to see if they can get a draw here and bat ou the last 4 sessions without allowing England a chance at a small total then it will show the progress that they are making and even though it won't be a win it will still be a good test match performance.

On the bowling front it's been a poor tour for Steven Finn but it must be said that neither of the test match pitches have been condusive for his type of bowling, however the other bowlers have made a good go of it with Stuart Broad and James Tredwell bowling well. The two outstanding bowlers have been quite easily Graeme Swann and Tim Bresnan and between the 2 of them they will be hoping to give England at least a chance of snatching victory in the rest of this test.

Elsewhere there was the first test match between Australia and New Zealand and after a Michael Clarke hundred in the first innings the Australians posted 459-5 and after a good bowling performance saw New Zealand bowled out for just 157 there was surely only ever one winner in this match.

The follow on was enforced and it was only thanks to Brendon McCullums 104 and good innings from Vettori and McIntosh that New Zealand posted 407 leaving australia need just over 100 to win the match. 23 overs later and the match was over with the score of Australias last innings standing at 106-0 with opener Hughes making 86 off 75 balls to ensure an easy win in the test match.

Elsewhere the IPL is now in full swing and it is the batsmen that are dominating it at the moment with good knocks coming from the old pros such as Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Andrew Symonds and in particular from the master Sachin Tendulkar. It has also been good to see Ravi Bopara and Eoin Morgan getting good scores for their teams as well.

England win the first test

So the first test between England and Bangladesh ended up the way that everyone thought it would, with a comprehensive England victory but it was a game that seemed to be marred by bad decisions, although in this case it was not the umpires with the bad decisions but the players and the captains in particular.

The first two mistakes were made before the game even began and it was a mistake for each captain, firstly England Captain Cook chose to go in to the game with 3 seamers and just one spinner which would eventually mean Graeme Swann having to bowl around 80 overs himself. Then Bangladesh won the toss and their skipper chose to bowl on what was a fantastic batting pitch, 599 runs later and he may have realised he made a mistake.

There was good runs for Cook who got a test highest score of 173 and Collingwood who got a breezy 145 and they were well supported by Kevin Pietersen getting 99 and Ian Bell a quick 84. After that it was over to Bangladesh and a respectable batting performance saw them get to 296 with Graeme Swann taking 5-90 on a pitch that wasn't actually spinning as far as some people thought it might.

So next question was would England enforce the follow on or not, the answer was not and out they came for a bat to put the game way out of reach of Bangladesh and a quick 209-7 off 50 overs saw that Bangladesh would need to bat out 5 sessions or score a mammoth 512 to avoid a test defeat.

Most pundits where of the opinion that Bangladesh would go down easily on the last day and a half and that it might as well have been called an England win there but Bangladesh seemed to have a different opinion. A fine innings of 106 from Siddique and 95 from Rahim held England up until just before tea on the final day but the runs were just too many for them to chase down as there final innings finished on 331 all out with Graeme Swann taking his second 5 wicket haul of the match to finish with 10-217 and Bangladesh lost the test by 181 runs.

So with the second one starting on Saturday morning it will interesting to see if it will be as one sided as this one was, and also it will be interesting to see if England maintain their one spinner team as surely Swann must be tired after bowling almost 50 overs himself on the final day and a half.

The lack of form of KP

So with England out in Bangladesh everyone thought that it would be a good time for England and more importantly Kevin Pietersen to get some runs under his belt both in the One Day and Test forms of the game, something which he has struggled with of late.

After the One Day Internationals however this does not seem to be a plan that is going well with him getting a highest score of 22 in the 3 games and generally showing for some reason that he cannot play left arm spin very well something which was highlighted when he repeatedly got out to Yuvraj Singh last time we played India and the fact that whenever KP was at the crease they brought him on to bowl.

There is hope however with a 2 game test series coming up that he will be able to get in and get some runs at some point throughout the 4 innings (potentially) although they do have a lot of spinners and he will have to work on his technique against the left handed spinners in particular. The warm up game saw Michael Carberry opening the batting with Captain Cook and it looks as if that is the way they will go for this tour with Andrew Strauss having a well deserved rest before the summer tests back in England.

The bowlers however are not having a good time with injuries to both Ryan Sidebottom and Stuart Broad meaning that they may not make the test matches, however there is more hope for Stuart Broad to play in both. It will be most interesting to see the composition of the side as many people believe that we will go in with 2 spinners which means that Graeme Swann will probably be partnered by James Tredwell.

Even with playing two spinners I presume that they will go in to the first test with 6 batsmen, the keeper then two spinners and two seamers probably using Paul collingwood as the fifth bowler should they need one. So with the first test starting Friday it will be a good chance to see just where England are at and if they can keep up their 100%.