In a tournament full of surprises already, the biggest surprise is the fact that Delhi Daredevils, a team that I have tipped in the past to emerge as overall champions, are still to get off the mark.
They sit rock bottom. Nul points. A net run-rate of -0.8. Even with the mercurial Virender Sehwag back, they couldn’t see off Sunrisers Hyderabad, who almost made a mess of chasing 115 to win. They had to rely on Dale Steyn and Amit Mishra to see them home. That game has already disappeared from the memory of most who had the misfortune to watch it and it suggests that neither team will be still around come late May.
We also saw the unusual sight of Mahela Jayawardene losing his temper after Mishra pinched an extra run after the ball bounced off him. According to the laws of the game, he did nothing wrong, and we have seen the ball bounce off players’ bats and reach the boundary. The runs aren’t removed, but it is a general unwritten rule that you don’t take a run if the ball has hit you while you’re attempting a run.
Perhaps it’s time for a rule change, where the ball becomes dead if it hits the batsman? It would eliminate such scenes as we saw at the Feroz Shah Kotla and after all, isn’t it too much of a batsman’s game anyway? The bowlers wouldn’t be complaining.
Speaking of Delhi, or at least of Delhi players, the tournament’s first ugly spat came when Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli exchanged a few verbals when the latter was dismissed for Royal Challengers Bangalore against Kolkata Knight Riders. There was little in it, both were given a slap on the wrist but the story didn’t end there.
As some commentators compared the spat to ‘slapgate’ in season one, which left Shanthakumaran Sreesanth in tears, Sreesanth took to Twitter to claim that rather than slapping him, Harbhajan Singh had elbowed him and that the video of the event has never been made publicly available. He is calling for the video to be published, and Lalit Modi (remember him?) popped up to say that he might show it to the world.
This is all very silly. The first part of this year’s tournament has been making headlines because of the cricket. Previous tournaments have been tarnished by exactly this sort of nonsense, and nobody wants to see it. Harbhajan was banned for slapping/tickling/elbowing Sreesanth, who was also disciplined. It was five years ago. Let it go. Sreesanth’s rant isn’t helping anybody, least of all himself. (More on Sreesanth’s record of being something of a problem player can be read here).
Honestly, as journalists, we are bored of writing and talking about allegations of match-fixing, corruption, fake player blogs, disputes, ownership irregularities, name-calling, after-match parties and the rest.
I really hope that we can get back to talking about the cricket, even if right now, Delhi Daredevils might welcome a few distractions to take the heat off of their frankly abject performances.