MS Dhoni, right, was acclaimed by the crowd as Chennai beat Kolkatta. Photograph: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images
Lalit Modi may be in exile thousands of miles away, but when it comes to the Indian Premier League, the house that he built, Modi and hyperbole are inextricably linked. As the clock ticked past 11pm in Chennai on Friday night, he tweeted: "back (sic) to last over finish. Love it".
A look at the scorecard and you might think this was a great game. Four needed off the last ball, and a superb yorker from Tim Southee – signed up as a replacement for the injured Ben Hilfenhaus – to ensure that the defending champions sneaked home. The reality was very different. This was a game of mistakes, of players looking fatigued and listless, a contest where a revamped Kolkata side suggested that losing might be part of the franchise's
DNA.
Ever since the competition began, the Knight Riders have been the most hyped team, with the retinue of celebrity and pseudo-celeb groupies. They've also been unmatched in the ineptitude stakes, finishing sixth, last and sixth – the only team never to make a semi-final.
Shah Rukh Khan, one of the owners, was part of a spectacularly tacky opening ceremony here, dressed as though in urgent need of a
new style consultant. At the
player auction in January, he and Kolkata broke the bank to buy the likes of Gautam Gambhir ($2.4m), Yusuf Pathan ($2.1m), Jacques Kallis ($1.1m) and Eoin Morgan ($350,000).
A fresh start with fresh faces. And three-fourths of the way through, the owner who had borrowed MC Hammer's pleated trousers from the 1980s had reason to smile. Having restricted Chennai to 153, the Knight Riders were perfectly placed, needing just 66 from 54 balls.
But as with South Africa in the competitions that matter, Kolkata never seem far from the self-destruct button. It was Kallis that pushed it here, lap-sweeping a carrom-ball gone wrong from Ravichandran Ashwin to short fine leg. Until then he had batted with scarcely a care for 54, the only batsmen to appear completely at ease on a two-paced pitch.
Morgan's miserable night ended seven balls later. In the field, he had dropped the simplest of catches, allowing Srikkanth Anirudha – the son of Krishnamachari Srikkanth, the former Indian opener who's now chief selector – to finish with 64 rather than 39. With the bat, he struck one splendid stroke over cover before a headless-chicken charge that made Suresh Raina look more like Erapalli Prasanna than a part-time bowler.
All the while, Gambhir, who usually bats in the top three, had been watching from the pavilion. Two balls later, that was where he was headed, caught short by a superb throw from Scott Styris. Six days after attaining legendary status with a World Cup-winning 97, he looked a little bemused as he trudged back with more than 30,000 cheering.
The full-throated affirmation had been reserved for the other hero of that run chase, MS Dhoni, who walked out to bat with his name being chanted from every corner of the ground. For Chennai, he isn't just a World Cup winner, but also the
man who led the most consistent team in the league to the
IPL and Champions League double last year.
He was relatively subdued on Friday but for one massive six over long-on, and his game-turning moment came in the field – a magnificent chase, pick-up and throw with only one stump to aim at that caught Pathan short of his ground.
The fans in canary-yellow with their Whistle Podu [Blow the Whistle] song went home happy, even though it had been a quiet night by their usual raucous standards. Prior to the match, several fans at the gate admitted to being emotionally spent. They seemed to be there out of habit more than anything else.
They'll find that easier to do in Chennai than at other venues because the Super Kings are the only franchise to have retained the core of the team that tasted so much success last year. Muttiah Muralitharan may have moved on to Kochi and the Tuskers, and Matthew Hayden hasn't been invited back, but the rest of the cast isn't very different.
Contrast that with the likes of Bangalore Royal Challengers, with not one big-name
local player, or Delhi Daredevils – only Virender Sehwag of the stars has roots in the area – and it's easy to see why Chennai can expect sizeable crowds throughout the season. There were empty seats today, especially in the hospitality boxes, but after a fortnight or two to
recover from the high of 2 April, it should be back to whistling as usual.
Kochi, where Murali is unlikely to play the early games after hobbling through the final stages of the World Cup, is another centre that can expect capacity crowds. There, the key factor is novelty. The city has hosted the odd one-day game down the years, but it's never been a regular stop for the Indian cricket caravan.
Some would argue that it isn't cricket country either. Even a decade ago, the Nehru Stadium would be packed to the floodlights for football games. Had Argentina visited, as they will Kolkata later this year, they could have sold out the 60,000-seater thrice over.
Since then though, with the emergence of Tinu Yohannan – whose father was a long jump gold medalist in the Teheran Asian Games of 1974 – and Sreesanth, the balance has tilted towards cricket, aided by the football team continuing to swim in extremely shallow waters.
On Saturday, they will come from as far south as Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital, and from as far north as Kannur to watch Kerala's first IPL game. Sreesanth is the token Malayali in the XI, but the Tuskers' chances of doing well will rest largely on the batting of Mahela Jayawardene.
If the IPL and the team, mostly owned by folk with no ties to the state, grow roots, it remains to be seen how the other sports that were once such a big part of Kerala's sporting landscape react. The football talent pool has shrunk to a puddle, volleyball hasn't seen someone of Jimmy George's stature – he was playing in Italy when he died in a car crash in the mid-1980s – and the athletes haven't come close to matching what PT Usha did in the same era.
Sadly, with so much media focus on the IPL, the one ray of light is likely to be missed. Geethu Anna Jose, the centre for the national basketball team, has already played three seasons in Australia (2006-08, for the Ringwood Hawks). Later this month, she leaves for trials with Chicago Sky and LA Sparks in the WNBA. Despite the cricket being in town, one can only hope that people sit up and take notice.
Abdullah Shahzad
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