Col­in Croft

?With the In­di­an Pre­mier League 2010 fin­ish­ing its first week, al­ready the trend is very pos­i­tive. A few teams have made more than 200 runs in their al­lot­ment, mean­ing that, gen­er­al­ly, bowlers, over­all, are be­ing beat­en up. Teams have even made over 200 runs; more than ten runs per over; and yet have lost with such to­tals. The bats­men are, typ­i­cal­ly, ex­celling this time. The win­ners are the lucky In­di­an crick­et-mad spec­ta­tors. In one game, the Kings XI Pun­jab made 203-3 in their 20 overs, and yet lost, as the Roy­al Chal­lengers Ban­ga­lore beat that; 204-2 from "on­ly" 18.5 overs. I think that the IPL 2010 com­pe­ti­tion is just too long, with 60 games sched­uled, but the en­ter­tain­ment and ex­cite­ment val­ues are ex­treme­ly high; all tremen­dous­ly en­joy­able in­deed for all in­volved. The cream of the world's T-20 bats­men is com­ing to the fore, those who are al­ready re­tired in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, and those who as­pire to greater things in their bud­ding ca­reers too.

Mak­ing a name for them­selves

In one game, Owais Shaw, who can­not make a nor­mal Eng­land Test, ODI or T-20 team, got 58 from 46 balls, a pro­duc­tion rate of 126per cent. Sri Lan­ka's An­ge­lo Math­ews, who, at 22, must be one of the world's fore­most emerg­ing stars, has al­so shown his all-round worth, al­ready win­ning a game each with both bat­ting and bowl­ing. These are but a few ex­am­ples of how the IPL could im­prove both skills and, of course, bank books. What the IPL al­so does, since it ends on April 25 next, is to sharp­en the tal­ents, and talons, of the preda­to­ry bats­men in­volved there, to con­tin­ue their ef­forts in­to the ICC WT-20 com­pe­ti­tion, which starts in Guyana on 30 April. My on­ly con­cern would be for the West In­dies play­ers who have not had an APL con­tract. How are they to pre­pare for the com­ing com­pe­ti­tion? Where is their prepara­to­ry crick­et? Ba­si­cal­ly, they will be do­ing very lit­tle to hone their skills in the month lead­ing up to that bash.

Keep­ing in shape

Right now, three Eng­lish teams are tour­ing some­where, while New Zealand, Sri Lan­ka, Aus­tralia, Bangladesh and oth­ers are play­ing crick­et, ei­ther in­ter­na­tion­al­ly or in their do­mes­tic com­pe­ti­tions, keep­ing their eyes in. So, ob­vi­ous­ly, the plan­ning of our re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tions and their tim­ings, ef­fec­tive­ness and use­ful­ness are less than suit­ing the re­al pur­pose; to pre­pare for the ICC WT-20. In the mean­time, the rest of the West In­dies play­ers, ex­cept those at the IPL; Chris Gayle (Kolkata Knight Rid­ers), Dwayne Bra­vo (Mum­bai In­di­ans), Kieron Pol­lard (Mum­bai In­di­ans), Ke­mar Roach (Dec­can Charg­ers), Dawyne Smith (Dec­can Charg­ers) and Adri­an Barath (Kings XI Pun­jab), are at home doz­ing away the time with club crick­et, way be­low the stan­dards re­quired for the im­me­di­ate fu­ture. Last week al­so saw the Zim­bab­weans fin­ish their very short but in­for­ma­tive tour, while I cel­e­brat­ed my 57th birth­day. To have been born on The Ides of March; March 15; the same day that Gaius Julius Cae­sar was butchered by his "friends", they sup­pos­ed­ly rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed the sen­ti­ment too, is con­fus­ing, in­vig­o­rat­ing and in­trigu­ing.

It just goes to show how one's sta­tion in life could be con­sid­ered, es­pe­cial­ly from so-called "friends." De­spite this ini­tial overview, I count my­self very for­tu­nate in­deed to have been able to sur­vive the stuff that I have, and yet to be still here, tick­ing like a smooth Seiko Ki­net­ic. I have made so many life come­backs, hav­ing sur­vived so many very ex­treme, ad­verse and dan­ger­ous sets of ex­ter­nal stim­uli, that I count my­self akin to Drac­u­la; "un-dead­able"! West In­dies did not achieve in West In­dies al­so did come back, against Zim­bab­we, in a way, but to have No 8 ranked team beat No 10 ranked team is no re­al achieve­ment. The achieve­ment would have been, could near­ly have been, to have the op­po­site hap­pen. It re­al­ly near­ly did! West In­dies cap­tain, Chris Gayle was, cor­rect­ly, not­ed as the Man of the Se­ries, with 273 runs from his five ODI in­nings, an av­er­age of 54.6 and a healthy strike rate; 94 per cent. His pow­er and dom­i­nance should have in­spired the rest of his team, but that did not hap­pen ei­ther.

The next near­est bats­man, over­all, was Zim­bab­we's El­ton Chigum­bu­ra, who made 148 runs from his five in­nings, av­er­ag­ing 29.6; strike rate 72 per cent. Out­side of Gayle stel­lar ef­fort, which con­clud­ed that, while it was not Aus­tralia, at least his team did achieve that cov­et­ed 4-1 suc­cess, the rest of the West In­dies bats­men looked very or­di­nary in­deed against the spin­ners of Zim­bab­we. How they will per­form against the bet­ter co-or­di­nat­ed bowl­ing at­tacks of Aus­tralia, In­dia, Sri Lan­ka and South Africa in the ICC WT-20 will be some­thing to see, I am sure. I, for one, can­not wait for it to start. This time, there could have been no ex­cus­es, as there were last year, when Bangladesh was sup­posed to have beat­en our "sec­ond team." Ex­cept for Ramnaresh Sar­wan; still con­sid­ered a li­a­bil­i­ty with his back prob­lems and Mar­lon Samuels still banned, the West In­dies were sup­posed to have been at full strength against Zim­bab­we, with­out count­ing the in­juries to a few of the faster bowlers, Fi­del Ed­wards and Jerome Tay­lor! Pa­pa!

Way be­low Test lev­el

What wor­ries me so much more is that none of these 'top' play­ers looked the part. Guyana's Nars­ingh De­onar­ine will al­ways be a bit play­er, one who comes good one day, in­con­sis­tent­ly fail­ing the next. To il­lus­trate my point, he made 165 runs in the five-match se­ries, yet made 65 not out in one of them. He has nei­ther the tem­pera­ment nor is the dis­place­ment there, even though his for­tune does help him out some­what. For once, his com­pa­tri­ot Shiv Chan­der­paul has al­so strug­gled bad­ly against the Zim­bab­weans. He to­taled 140 in his four in­nings, yet scored half of them, 70, in one in­nings alone. This is in­con­sis­ten­cy that does not nor­mal­ly char­ac­ter­ize Shiv. Adri­an Barath to­taled 131 from five in­nings, with on­ly one 50. That was just av­er­age. The much vaunt­ed Kieron Pol­lard, Dar­ren Sam­my and De­nesh Ramdin looked se­ri­ous­ly out of their depth. Pol­lard made 87 runs from five in­nings, av­er­age 17.4; Sam­my made just 17 runs, in his three in­nings, while Ramdin made 60 runs from his four in­nings.

I am sure that I am not alone here when I say that these kinds of re­sults, against a very poor Zim­bab­we team, can­not be ac­cept­able. These, mind you, are our first team not­ed here! The on­ly rea­son Zim­bab­we did not al­so win the ODI se­ries is that their bat­ting is not ac­cus­tomed to be­ing put un­der pres­sure. Re­mem­ber that they had not played in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et for near­ly four years and this was on­ly their sec­ond so­journ since re­turn­ing a few months ago. How­ev­er, with some more games and some steel in their eyes and bel­lies, Zim­bab­we could again come back to haunt the West In­dies, es­pe­cial­ly with their spin­ners. While beat­en, they should not be em­bar­rassed, as they showed that at least, their bowl­ing skills are quite ca­pa­ble of de­stroy­ing sup­pos­ed­ly bet­ter bat­ting line-ups. That T-20 game in T&T, when Zim­bab­we made 105 and de­mol­ished to West In­dies to 79-7, would live on in in­famy, re­gard­less as to what they will achieve af­ter this tour. En­joy!