Champions League- A shaky start though ended with a bang

 A lot had been already said and the buzz is still around that because of the overdose of T20 exhibition, cricket has certainly lost its zest over the period. It hurts to admit that I missed the Nokia T20 Champions league finals in that course. The very next day I woke up, held the newspaper and followed my usual tendency of dismissing the front page and in no time turned up to the page displays sports world, I witnessed the whole Mumbai Indians squad holding a gravid trophy, my initial reaction was, How did that happened?

Gone were the all hyping and annoying tools of ridiculous sponsorship of IPL of promoting brands. Catches were only Catches; there wasn’t’ Karbonn kamaal’ behind it though there were many Kamaal catches. No strategic Time-outs to ensure that ‘max’ can breathe freely. Sixes were Sixes; the only thing that was new was the’ Toshiba power six’ from ‘DLF maximum’. There were umpteen moments of joy but then they weren’t ‘City moment of success’.

For viewers, it was a rare opportunity for the cricket to do the speaking, as always. When I turn on my television I always looked for an expert insight commentator who gives that much more entertaining touch to a match, not those who are spending so much time either looking for the opportunity, or ensuring that they don’t forget to mention sponsors. The excellent cricketing brains like Sunil Gavaskar, Ian Chappell, Tom Moody and even kumara Sangakaraa was given the opportunity of speaking his knowledge and mind about the game. However Ravi Shastri, somewhat was soft by his likes, and Harsha Bhogle were always there to add a bit of instinct and branding to the occasion.

Well now, from an Indian perspective, there were few moments in the tournament where Indians find themselves crying out for heroes. Virat Kohli was the only amongst the Indian who scored among 24 top scorers. The bowling department is similarly worrying as it has always been in International arena. The pick of the players from the tournament were those, one might have predicted before the battle. To start with, Chris Gayle, so as often destructive, unstoppable to say the least, but failed to deliver in an all important finals. Typical Jacques Kallis as always inventive, consistently excellent both with the bat and bowl, but then again unable to inspire the team to the finale. None can understand the pain of not reaching the finals better than a South African I am sure.

Let us spare a thought on some bright and positive prospects that India could take out of this tournament to get over their sour phase which is not over yet. There were some really good individual performances during the tournament. Abu Nachim. The young lad surely has a serious bowling talent and bowled some tight length in whole of the endeavour, though still a long way to go. Ambati Raydu showed a good promise with the bat now and before and is set to hit the next stage. Another bright prospect in the name of Saurabh tiwary is improving match by match. There are some extremely talented cricketers coming up with their solid challenges, let see, who gets a chance to make his mark in the team first.