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The Kolkata Knight Riders made 261 and then lost a game to Punjab Kings. The KKR management out up a brave face and defended its bowlers. But some of the teams, who prefer playing on sluggish pitches, aren’t particularly happy with the kind of flat decks that are given to home teams. KKR is one of them. They can’t stomach the fact that the impossible is nothing. That is how the ongoing IPL could be summed up.
The batters are on the loose and out there to destroy the bowlers and it doesn’t matter what the target is. “It’s a hard day in office,” as former World Cup-winning captain Michael Clarke puts it. So, what if this IPL is a graveyard for bowlers? There is a thing called comeback, which not all the bowlers can do. Barring a few like Rajasthan Royals’ Yuzvendra Chahal, Mumbai’s Jasprit Bumrah, Delhi’s Kuldeep Yadav, Kolkata’s Sunil Narine, Hyderabad’s T Natarajan – who have impressed with their style of fight back when their teammates are on the receiving end.
The IPL teams haven’t registered an official complaint to the effect of blaming the pitches for losing high-scoring games, but the resentment is quite palpable. Still, no team can complain about pitches assisting mindless hitting because it is against the basic principle of T20 cricket. Fans throng the stadium to watch four and sixes– it is like more the merrier. It is entertainment, entertainment, and entertainment. The good thing is that Yash Dayal’s kind of spell against KKR’s Rinku Singh was the first of its kind in the 2023 IPL. Thankfully, the bowlers are reloaded this year. There is less sense of shame, almost thick-skinned. The team owners are on different trips to find the cause and effect of losing IPL matches.
Win some, lose some. But the ones with the best bowling attack are bound to end the 2024 IPL with a big smile. Those, who are blaming pitches for the bowlers being sent on a leather hunt, are just losing their time brooding over it. At least, the BCCI has done something right by standardizing pitches in all IPL games. Otherwise, the standard was to see two different coaches from the same franchise coming and giving two different opinions on how to prepare a match wicket to the local curators.
Fortunately, that has stopped; the curators can now focus on preparing flat-track bullies. Let’s not worry about the T20 World Cup! All the top T20 cricketers are here and a part and parcel of the run-fests that are ruling the roost!
