IPL and bottom teams

I have been travelling travelling and travelling during the past seven days and because of that missed out IPL semifinals as well as finals :( . Drove roughly 1600 Kms, thanks to great highway network in US, covered four cities. It was tiring but was fun. Spent couple of days in Chicago with one friend and then travelled to Wisconsin dells to see the water park capital of the world, came back and again drove to Wausau for some official work and came back today morning.

But in between all the fun, I missed out the final and second semifinal of IPL. I read about the blistering hundred from Manish Pandey and the nail biting finish in the finals. Till now a lot has been written about two bottom placed teams of IPL 1.0 playing in the finals of IPL 2.0, but we might want to go back to IPL 1.0 and remember that RR were supposed to be bottom placed team then and they came up with a surprise team studded with stones (little known players) instead of gems (the big stars) and took every one by surprise. Deccan chargers, if had done this good last time around it would not have been a surprise but coming back from bottom to top is a real good one. For Bangalore also it was quite positive after a disastrous last session and further bad start with KP at the helm of affairs.

Delhi and Chennai were good but were not that good in the knock out stage but if i have to pick one factor which really worked in favor of RR last year and for RCB and DC this year and that is fact that at the end of the day you have to rely and home talent. Gilchrist definitely was at his best in taking away the semifinals but in other matches he was well supported by his Indian colleagues. Be it Pragyan Ojha, RP or Suman, no one really was ready to call it quits. Whatever we may say about disastrous first half Bangalore had with KP leading the deck, but the fact is that their domestic talent was not working then. It might have to do with KP himself, as it needs a Captain like Warne or Kumble to get the talent out of shyness by giving them additional responsibilities. Warne did not shed tears for his limited resources like Buchanan (who wanted more foreign players in the playing XI). Kumble did the same by sending the newcomer Pandey to open the innings in a semifinal. Gilchrist did not shy away from benching Laxman to give Suman a chance.

If anything the other teams have to learn from two IPLs is that, they need the home grown talent and for that they can not just rely on state ranji teams. Like Warne they may want to test a few folks who didn't even play a single first class match as every one know what it takes in India to get a place in State team.

I will soon updating my visit to Home of Harley Davidson (yes Milwaukee is the town where they are built and I visited their factory)