IPL 4: Now for the blended spirit

To watch Shane Warne leading a relatively low profile Rajasthan Royals to victory in the inaugural IPL was a revelation. Here was a guy generally projected as brazen, brash and loose expressing himself in a manner that bowled even his critics over. Suddenly, he came across in a different light altogether, as a maverick leader, an out-of-the-box strategist and an inspirational team-man to boot.

What’s more, a cricket fan, freed from the nationalistic fervour that builds up around events such as the World Cup, could appreciate more fully the subtle skills that had made Warne the most successful leg-spinner ever. Without the distraction of whether India would win or lose, you could admire the perfect slant of his arm at the point of delivery in order to get that big turn which had once produced the so-called ball of the century — the one that pitched outside leg, spun past Mike Gatting’s broad, defensive blade, and knocked out his off-bail. You could see the whole range of variations he employed, without losing his accuracy, to always seem to stay one step ahead of the batsman.

It wasn’t just Warne. There was Gilchrist lifting the Deccan Chargers out of the bottom of the league table where they had finished in the first IPL, to win IPL2 in South Africa. What a different persona it was, friendly and getting the best out of the boys from Hyderabad, compared to the pulveriser from the 2003 and 2007 World Cup finals. It’s really only when he came to the IPL that an Indian fan could appreciate the many dimensions of this extremely gifted cricketer. To see him in full flow in the Navi Mumbai stadium even against the home team Mumbai Indians was a treat and not quite so depressing as it would have been if the knock had been played against India. It’s not that the league teams don’t build up a fan following, but you’re not so constantly at the edge of your seat like you are when you watch an India game. Not yet, at any rate. This just makes the viewing experience different, and in some ways more interesting.

Appreciating good cricket
In the India-Pakistan game, for instance, you were so caught up with whether India would pull it off, and whether the Akmal brothers, Younus and Misbah had fixed it again, that it drew your attention away from the subtle cricketing skills that were on display at the same time. We all went ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ when Sachin presented those two catches off Afridi, but how many of us noticed the dip that the Pakistan captain got on his leg spin which produced those false shots? He has really developed as a leg-spinner since India played him a few years earlier: the leg spin fizzed and dipped, and the flipper drifted and darted into the pads.

When you take players of this class from around the world and mix them in with the best that India has to offer, you get these kaleidoscopic teams with a diversity of styles and attitudes, and that’s something we’ve rarely seen before. For years and years, we’ve become familiar with national teams and their characteristic attributes — the Indians with wily spinners and wristy strokeplayers, the Calypso cricketers with their flamboyant batting and chin music, the Aussies with their aggressive pack mentality and consummate pulling. Now, when you take these diverse attributes and mix them together in one team, you get a brew that is richer and more nuanced. It’s not unlike mixing a selection of single malts into a fine blended Scotch.

Single or blended?
The blended Scotch may lack the clarity and sharpness of a single malt, but it has a charm and sophistication of its own. Similarly, you might miss the dizzying highs and lows of following your national team after the World Cup, but what you can enjoy in its place is a more relaxed enjoyment of cricketing talent as the best players of the world are split up into equally matched teams.

It’s still a novel experience to see the top players from different nations playing together in one team. We’ve hardly ever had the opportunity to see this after the heyday of World Series Cricket organised by TV tycoon Kerry Packer in Australia decades ago. So today when you see two explosive openers from rival national teams, Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya, stride out together to bat for Mumbai Indians, it makes for an intriguing prospect, not only because it is sensational, but also because it’s a rare delight for the cricket connoisseur. How do two superstars like these complement each other and build a partnership, drawing upon their years of experience to compress what normally takes a long time to develop?

It must have been the same when Sunil Gavaskar and South African great Barry Richards, the best openers of their day, paired up to open the innings for a World XI in Kerry Packer’s era. What a treat that must have been for Aussie audiences!

Rivals become heroes
For a sports fan, there’s a subtle change that comes over your appreciation of good cricket regardless of its national origin. Suddenly, Malinga is no longer the Lankan destroyer who wants to take away the World Cup from us. He is a Mumbai Indian too, and if he had forgotten that, the ‘Maa-lin-ga, Maa-lin-ga’ chanting from the stands during the Lanka-NZ match at the Wankhede during this World Cup would have reminded him of this dual identity. With Malinga on our side, so to speak, it’s a lot easier to see and enjoy the uniqueness and deadly quality of his bowling; when he bowls against India, we’re too caught up with worrying about whether the batsman will survive.

For the players too, the blending creates bridges across cultures, and sometimes over troubled waters as well. Matthew Hayden, for instance, recounts in his book, Standing My Ground, how he had this awkward moment when his Chennai opening partner Parthiv Patel asked him if he could recollect their first encounter in Australia. Young Parthiv was running into the ground during the drinks break when he smiled at Hayden as he passed him. The burly Aussie, the leader of his team’s pack of sledgers, snarled in response: “What are you grinning at, you infant?”

And now, here was Hayden in Chennai discovering the many facets of the diminutive but spirited Parthiv that he liked, and also had in common with him, both as a cricketer and a family man. He even went so far as to compromise on the ‘Aussie way’ out of respect for Parthiv.

The Aussies have a thing about being different: so their unlucky number is 87 and not 13, they had eight-ball overs, and so on.  Another one of these quirks was for batting partners never to do glove punches or touch bats when they meet in the middle of the pitch between overs, as players from the rest of the world are wont to do. So when Parthiv put up his glove for his partner Hayden to punch, the no-nonsense Aussie was in a quandary. But he could not help himself — he just had to reciprocate, albeit looking over his shoulder to see if any of his Aussie team-mates had spotted this little exchange!

Sharing intelligence
The blending extends off the field too, not just in terms of understanding each other’s ways a little better, but also in sharing cricketing intelligence. An example of this was in the way that Dhoni and Hayden plotted the dismissal of the dangerous Kieron Pollard of Mumbai Indians, which led to Chennai winning last year’s IPL final. Pollard holed out to Hayden, who had been placed just behind the bowler.

It isn’t that one form of the game is better than the other. The World Cup had its moments and you can’t match the passion and nervous excitement that something like the Indo-Pak semi-final can produce. In league cricket, it’s different. With both players and fans a little more relaxed, although the matches are all keenly contested, it’s just a great environment for enjoying the nuances of the game. So cheers to both the World Cup which has just ended, and the IPL which is starting in five days. These are good times indeed for cricket lovers.