Introduction:
This year in the Indian Premier League the points table has been different from other years because 7 teams were in contention with only a few matches to go to make the semi finals and only 1 team were not winning too many games. Mumbai was the inform team during this IPL with them having more points than the other teams by a long shot. Deccan had a close finish and somehow found them self at 2nd place at the end of the matches before the finals. Chennai had a close game against the bottom team Punjab to make the finals with some impressive batting. Bangalore played well but during some games they fell apart in there middle order but luckily they won enough games to have a place in the finals.
Mumbai were defiantly going to be in first place before the finals as they were leading by a few more points than all the other teams. Mumbai were favourites for this tournament as they had a good auction picking up a highly respected cricketer in the T20 format called Kieron Pollard. There star recruit didn’t show too many of his skills with the bat but later he started getting starts that started entertaining the crowd.
They had the talent of course to get them through with Sachin Tendulkar scoring 561 runs also top scoring for the whole IPL. Surprisingly Mumbai’s only batsman in the top 10 highest run scorers before the finals was Tendulkar but Saurabh Tiwary was in 10th place with 367 runs. Recently Pollard has performed with the bat as he was a main pick for Mumbai in the auction but was not batting like what people expected he would at the start of this great tournament.
Harbhajan Singh was the pick of the bowlers collecting 15 wickets with the ball in his hand and only conceding 6.65 runs each over. Zaheer Khan was the 2nd best bowler for Mumbai with 14 wickets at an economy rate of 7.63 runs an over. Malinga was also a star player with them but did not play every game as he was an overseas player but he picked up 13 wickets at a rate of 7 runs an over.
The Deccan Chargers sneaked into 2nd place after winning there last couple of games which boosted their rank after they weren’t going too well at the start of the tournament. Deccan Chargers bought Kemar Roach after the hype he got after the Australian Series but did not perform at all for the Deccan Chargers. They ended up winning 8 of their 14 matches before they advanced through to the Semi Finals. The bowling was a little expensive at times which cost them a few games depending on their batsman to win the match for them.
The Deccan Chargers batting was good as normal in the batting department although team captain and opening batsman Adam Gilchrist only scored 270 runs at a average of 19.28 which was quite disappointing for Deccan. Symonds had scored the most runs for Deccan with 404 runs with a few important innings for Deccan to win crucial matches. Rohit Sharma followed Symonds with 402 runs with a good strike rate with a good average of 33.50.
Ojha the spinner for the Chargers was very impressive with the ball ending the matches before the finals with the purple cap collecting 20 wickets which helped Deccan win many games. RP Singh had collected the 2nd most amount of wickets for Deccan with 14 but bowled at a costly economy rate conceding 8.86 runs per over. Harris was a very helpful bowler for the Chargers after the New Zealand tour and collected 11 wickets from the only 6 matches with an economy rate of 8.02. There big signing of Kemar Roach did not do them too many favours as he only played 2 games and did not get a single wicket and conceded 10 runs per over.
The Super Kings were a very good batting side but there bowling was not as good but they as they would have liked but improved at the end. There batting was marvellous to watch as they recorded the highest score of the tournament with 246 runs scored in there innings. There bowling might not have been good but once they signed Bollinger after his tour of New Zealand there seemed to be an improvement with Ashwin also helping the cause. Raina and Vijay starred with the bat with helped them win many crucial games including the match to get them into the semi finals.
The batting was fantastic from Chennai except the fact that only 2 batsmen were in the top 10 which was disappointing but they still were a great batting side chasing down big scores and setting big scores for others to chase. Raina starred with the bat as he was the 3rd best batsman of the tournament before the finals with a massive 461 runs with a hefty strike rate of 141.84. Vijay followed being 6th best batsman of the tournament with 417 with a huge score of 127 against Rajasthan. Hayden was the big man from Chennai who was expected to be a crucial element to their batting but he did not get going in most of his performance although was still there 3rd best batsman with 321 runs with a high score of 93 for the tournament with the mongoose against Dehli.
The Chennai bowlers bowled a lot better than last year with some impressive performances in most matches. Muralitharan was the key bowler for Chennai even though he only played 10 matches but still he collected 13 wickets at a rate of 7.40 runs per over. Ashwin was another key man for Chennai after soon after Muralitharan was dropped and he was the main spinner for the Super Kings getting 12 batsman out for a impressive economy rate of 6.37 runs an over which was one of the best economy rates before the semi finals in the tournament. Bollinger was also a key bowler after he got signed late in the season but still collected 7 wickets after 6 matches who had an impressive economy rate of 7.08.
Bangalore was a fairly good team during the tournament but at time struggled. Bangalore’s key factor during this tournament was surprisingly there bowlers. There batting struggle except Kallis and Uthappa at time but once they got down to the middle order they collapsed which let them down with some tight loses. There bowlers were great in most games with Kumble, Steyn and Vinay Kumar all doing well for them.
The batting was good at some times but most of the time the middle order fell apart which let them down with what there bowlers were capable of. Jacques Kallis was once the highest run scored but his last couple of performances weren’t as strong as at the start but he scored 542 runs but Kumble criticised him because of his strike rate of 119.64. Robin Uthappa was also a key man for Bangalore although he was 13th highest run scorer with 348 runs with a quite impressive strike rate of 169.75. Virat Kohli was another healthy run scorer for the Royal Challengers with a decent run tally of 298 runs with a strike rate of 145.36.
Their main factor of this tournament was defiantly there bowling with Steyn, Kumble and Vinay Kumar performing to keep them in games. Vinay Kumar was not as well known as some of the other great bowlers but he was the 3rd best bowler before the finals with 16 wickets and that got him selected for the Indian Squad in the T20 World Cup. Both Dale Steyn and Anil Kumble were even with 12 wickets each but Steyn played one less game than Kumble. Kumble bowled at a economy rate of 6.46 and Steyn bowled at a rate of 6.76.
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