What you can only see in league cricket

The openers for Delhi were a Sri Lankan and an Indian — Mahela Jayawardene and Virender Sehwag. The opening bowlers for Mumbai were a Sri Lankan and an Indian — Lasith Malinga and RP Singh.

Malinga gave just one run in his first over, but 16 in his second. That’s because he bowled the first one to Sehwag who was circumspect after getting beaten twice. But Jayawardene had no trouble hitting him for three fours in his very next over. Strange? Should it not have been the other way round, Jayawardene defending and Sehwag hitting?

Not really. Jayawardene, unlike Sehwag, seemed to know instinctively what Malinga would bowl and where he would pitch it. After years of nets with him, he can probably dispatch Malinga to the fence in his sleep. And here we are talking of the league’s all-time best bowler. How cool is that? You can only see Sri Lanka’s best bat taking apart his fearsome colleague on an international stage in this form of the game.

The funny thing was to see Jayawardene struggle to put the lesser bowler RP Singh away, while Sehwag gobbled him up at every opportunity. That was natural too — RP, like Malinga, was making the new white ball swing under the lights, but Sehwag has seen his North Indian colleague operate from his formative years. He could collar him with his eyes closed.

It was fun also to see the obvious respect Mahela and Sehwag had for each other’s batting repertoire, the easy understanding they immediately had in running between the wickets, and the joy they shared in batting with each other. If you are not too caught up with backing your team, as you tend to be when you see your national team take the field, you can sit back and enjoy cricket’s simple pleasures, and the league gives you a myriad unexpected thrills like these.

A young West Indian, Sunil Narine, plying his off-break with all the guile that is traditional in the land of his ethnic roots; a wizened old Aussie Brad Hogg reveling in conditions that suit his left arm leg spin; youngsters like Rayudu, Rahane and Rohit proving their time has come; Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly trying equally hard to show they are not done; and captaincy that veers from the sublime to the disastrous; these are just a few of the things you can only see in league cricket.

The experienced Sehwag got his batting order just right, promoting Jayawardene to join him at the top — I suppose that is only to be expected from a side that has four players who have served as national captains: the Kiwi Ross Taylor, the Englishman Kevin Pietersen, Jayawardene from Lanka, and our own Viru.
At the other end of the scale you can see the inexperienced David Hussey struggling to fill the boots of his illustrious fellow Aussie Adam Gilchrist who is out injured. Hussey lost a game he had in his pocket by giving the 19th over of a 20-20 game to a leg spinner, that too Piyush Chawla who showed in the World Cup too that he cracks under pressure. That over cost 27 runs and the match. But his rivals from Mumbai have leadership issues of their own because Bhajji seems like a proxy captain for Sachin.

For sheer variety of cricketing conundrums, you just can’t beat league cricket.