5 things we miss dearly in IPL 2016

This hasn’t been the best of years for the Indian Premier League. Coming on the back of match-fixing scandals, the suspension of two teams which were crowd favourites and the frenzied T20 World Cup, the IPL hasn’t managed to grab the eyeballs that it would, by default, most years.

It didn’t help that Mumbai, probably the most vociferous of all IPL venues had to be abandoned because of the drought in Maharashtra, another unforeseen situation that has adversely affected the IPL although the jury is out on whether the IPL is to blame for this.

Amidst all these controversies, cricket has been reduced to a mere sideshow. But things could have been okay, if the cricket’s quality was high as audiences return in the latter part of the tournament. Despite being one of the more closely contested seasons, in terms of points table, IPL hasn’t really been as charming as it was expected to be. We look at 5 things we’ve missed dearly this season.

Chennai Super Kings

Chennai Super Kings was probably the team with the biggest fanbase in the IPL. CSK are also IPL’s most successful team making it to the playoffs regularly and winning both the IPL trophy and the Champions League. The absence of CSK has taken something massive out of the IPL. The yellow-clad CSK players are known for their fighting instinct, and under MS Dhoni, had pulled many a victory from the jaws of defeat.

CSK players mostly went either to Rising Pune Supergiants or Gujarat Lions. Suresh Raina has led Lions with some élan but the Supergiants led by Dhoni have struggled. Dhoni has been a shadow of himself and so has been Ravichandran Ashwin. Dhoni’s team has also been afflicted with injuries losing key players like Kevin Pietersen, Steve Smith, Faf du Plessis and Mitchell Marsh.

While Lions have been reasonably successful, they lack the aura of CSK under Dhoni. It doesn’t help that Raina hasn’t exactly set the IPL on fire with his batting. Pune do not even play at home as their matches have been shifted to Vizag, after the drought issues in Maharashtra. They weren’t good performers at home either.

Close finishes

We have had two last ball finishes this year, but no Super Over yet. Overall, this season has seen very few nail-biting finishes. For example, there were more than a dozen last over finishes in the previous season, if you also include the losses of teams by less than 10 runs.

This year, close finishes have been few and far between. In fact, there have been more one-sided losses than seen in recent times. We are yet to get to the Super Over in a match. Close finishes bring interest to the tournament. It generally happens when teams are well-settled and are performing to their potential.

Most teams this year are still finding their feet, whether it is Delhi Daredevils (the new Rajasthan Royals mentored by Rahul Dravid and with good domestic players), Pune Super Giants, Kings XI Punjab (David Miller as captain gave way to Murali Vijay, a little too late) or Mumbai Indians (a team which has witnessed big wins and big losses).

Only KKR and the surprise package Gujarat Lions have had a more or less settled look about them. Statistically, number of wins by 5 wickets or more is already 28 this year. It was only 19 last season. Number of matches won last year with 10 or more balls remaining was 11. This year it is already 17.

Hopefully, number of matches won by 20 runs or more this year (8) will remain lower than that of last year (17). It is interesting though, that stat, because this has largely been a bat-second IPL where most teams have won chasing and not by setting targets.

Full houses

With matches moving out of Wankhede and CSK suspended, two bastions have disappeared for the IPL. Add to that the inevitable cricket-exhaustion on the rise and we are left with stadiums that are not even full. Most matches have witnessed a lot of empty seats, whether it was a weekday or a weekend.

There was a time when finding tickets for IPL games was a tough proposition especially on weekends. The Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore has still retained its flavour thanks to its star-studded home team (which isn’t really doing that great) and its Captain Fantastic, Virat Kohli.

Other venues have seen patchy turnouts. It doesn’t help that the start to this year’s IPL was dotted with one-sided games. By 16th of May with a few matches still to go, we have seen close to a dozen matches won with either 4 overs remaining or by more than 30 runs. Some of those wins have been enormous.

Spectators want to watch closer matches but those haven’t conspired. While some like Kohli and AB de Villiers have lived up to their billing, some players like Chris Gayle and MS Dhoni haven’t turned up. Injuries to players like Lasith Malinga hasn’t helped the cause either.

Harsha Bhogle and quality commentary

TV viewers were thoroughly disappointed with news of Harsha Bhogle losing out on his contract for this year’s IPL commentary. One of the more sensible and adored English and Hindi commentators, Bhogle found himself at the cynosure of some criticism from various corners for not applauding the Indian team.

However, the standards of commentary, especially in English have dropped. Many a commentators are finding it hard to be fluent, articulate and clear, leave alone being informative and insightful.

It doesn’t help that IPL probably doesn’t really audition commentators for voice-likability and merely picks up a bunch of ex-cricketers, Nathan McCullum and Darren Sammy being good examples. Commentators of the quality of Michael Holding or Rahul Dravid or Shane Warne at the very least, could have helped.

200-plus scores

So far, we have had only three scores of 200-plus, two of them by RCB. The third one was scored by Mumbai Indians last Sunday. There have been 7 scores of 190-plus. Compared to that, last year, we had 7 200-plus scores and 10 190-plus scores.

Unless something changes drastically, the number of high scoring matches this year, will remain way below last year’s level. Interestingly, we also had 14 4-wicket hauls last year compared to just 9 this year (although we did have a 6-wicket haul by Adam Zampa). It is unlikely that number is going to be toppled either.

Interestingly, we have had far more 75+ scores this year (22) compared to last year (18) already. It is surprising why bigger scores were not produced more often this year. The grounds and the conditions have remained much the same and we didn’t have any breath-taking new bowling prodigies either (although Mustafizur Rahman has made up for the loss of Malinga).