*Official* Indian Premier League 2011

[centurymaker]

brockley, centurymaker, CricAddict, Cruxdude, Dhoni_fan, Shri - bang on the money with their prediction.

I dislike dhoni but knew they'd win. It's all fixed.

 

[irottev]

The Dhoni-Fleming Combo once again. India should ditch Fletcher and sign Fleming.

 

[James]

For those interested, this is how the points in Fantasy Cricket turned out in the end.

Position Player Name Points
1. Chris Gayle 1043
2. Lasith Malinga 828
3. Jacques Kallis 714
4. Yusuf Pathan 713
5. Yuvraj Singh 708
6. Virat Kohli 702
7. Paul Valthaty 688
8. Sachin Tendulkar 678
9. Shaun Marsh 659
10. MS Dhoni 652
11. Virender Sehwag 624
12. Michael Hussey 617
13. Shane Watson 615
14. Suresh Raina 608
15. Munaf Patel 580
16. Ravichandran Ashwin 562
17. Adam Gilchrist 560
18. Ambati Rayudu 548
19. Johan Botha 545
20. Murali Vijay 544
21. Shikhar Dhawan 540
22. Rahul Sharma 534
23. Kumar Sangakkara 524
24. Brad Hodge 520
25. Harbhajan Singh 518
26. Iqbal Abdulla 515
27. Rohit Sharma 502
28. Ravindra Jadeja 488
29. AB de Villiers 482
30. Manoj Tiwary 479
31. Subramaniam Badrinath 476
32. Robin Uthappa 475
33. Amit Mishra 473
34. Sreenath Aravind 473
35. Daniel Christian 455
36. Gautam Gambhir 453
37. Albie Morkel 438
38. Jesse Ryder 437
39. Doug Bollinger 430
40. David Warner 424
41. Venugopal Rao 421
42. Dale Steyn 416
43. Mahela Jayawardene 414
44. Daniel Vettori 403
45. Piyush Chawla 398
46. Irfan Pathan 395
47. Brendon McCullum 392
48. Kieron Pollard 391
49. Ryan Harris 391
50. Rahul Dravid 388
51. Dinesh Karthik 387
52. Shane Warne 365
53. Vinay Kumar 340
54. Rudra Pratap Singh 337
55. Parthiv Patel 331
56. James Hopes 331
57. Morne Morkel 320
58. Ishant Sharma 314
59. Manish Pandey 306
60. Rajat Bhatia 305
61. Zaheer Khan 286
62. Jean-Paul Duminy 285
63. Shakib Al Hasan 279
64. Sunny Sohal 264
65. Saurabh Tiwary 262
66. Bharat Chipli 257
67. Dwaraka Ravi Teja 253
68. Wayne Parnell 247
69. Ross Taylor 246
70. Shadab Jakati 245
71. Naman Ojha 239
72. Ashok Menaria 235
73. Alfonso Thomas 231
74. Pragyan Ojha 230
75. Mitchell Marsh 230
76. Siddharth Trivedi 225
77. Andrew Symonds 225
78. Roelof van der Merwe 219
79. Praveen Kumar 207
80. Tillakaratne Dilshan 206
81. Yogesh Nagar 191
82. Eoin Morgan 187
83. James Franklin 182
84. Aiden Blizzard 180
85. Lakshmipathy Balaji 179
86. Srikkanth Anirudha 168
87. David Hussey 164
88. Davy Jacobs 163
89. Amit Singh 161
90. Bhargav Bhatt 160
91. Ajinkya Rahane 155
92. Mayank Agarwal 151
93. Sreesanth 146
94. Cameron White 144
95. Ryan ten Doeschate 142
96. Ryan McLaren 140
97. Dhawal Kulkarni 137
98. Shaun Tait 135
99. Dishant Harendra Yagnik 135
100. Bipul Sharma 133
101. Shalabh Srivastava 124
102. Bhuvneshwar Kumar 121
103. Charl Langeveldt 118
104. Manvinder Bisla 118
105. Abu Nechim 118
106. Jerome Taylor 118
107. Ali Murtaza 117
108. Ajit Agarkar 117
109. Jamaluddin Syed Mohammad 115
110. Shrikant Wagh 112
111. Dwayne Bravo 111
112. Wriddhiman Saha 108
113. Luke Pomersbach 106
114. Mohammad Kaif 106
115. Shreevats Goswami 106
116. Abhishek Raut 105
117. Jaidev Unadkat 105
118. Tirumalasetti Suman 105
119. Suraj Randiv 102
120. Raiphi Gomez 101
121. Mithun Manhas 99
122. Brett Lee 95
123. Travis Birt 90
124. Anand Rajan 90
125. Mohnish Mishra 82
126. Abhimanyu Mithun 77
127. Aaron Finch 77
128. Michael Klinger 73
129. Mandeep Singh 72
130. Rajagopal Sathish 70
131. Sunny Singh 68
132. Callum Ferguson 68
133. Amit Paunikar 67
134. Prasanth Parameswaran 66
135. Manpreet Gony 65
136. Muttiah Muralitharan 60
137. Aavishkar Salvi 60
138. Thisara Perera 58
139. Stuart Binny 57
140. Abhishek Nayar 56
141. Owais Shah 56
142. Varun Aaron 55
143. Sourav Ganguly 55
144. Ashok Dinda 55
145. Nathan McCullum 51
146. Harmeet Singh 50
147. Cheteshwar Pujara 49
148. Ryan Ninan 43
149. Kedar Jadhav 43
150. Arun Karthik 43
151. Abhishek Jhunjhunwala 40
152. James Faulkner 40
153. Shahbaz Nadeem 40
154. Harpreet Singh 39
155. Gnanswara Rao 39
156. Ishank Jaggi 38
157. Dirk Nannes 35
158. Mark Boucher 34
159. VVS Laxman 34
160. Graeme Smith 32
161. Ankeet Chavan 31
162. Scott Styris 30
163. Colin Ingram 26
164. Tim Southee 25
165. Johan van der Wath 23
166. Matthew Wade 22
167. Pinal Shah 20
168. Shrikant Mundhe 20
169. Faiz Fazal 19
170. Sachin Rana 18
171. Brad Haddin 18
172. Kedar Devdhar 15
173. Laxmi Shukla 14
174. Murali Kartik 12
175. Ishan Malhotra 12
176. Nathan Rimmington 11
177. Faf du Plessis 10
178. Tim Paine 10
179. Swapnil Asnodkar 9
180. Siddharth Chitnis 9
181. Asad Pathan 8
182. Nuwan Kulasekara 5
183. Sarabjit Ladda 5
184. Vikramjeet Malik 5
185. Sridharan Sriram 4
186. Jacob Oram 0
187. Ganapathi Vignesh 0
188. Michael Lumb 0
189. Balachandra Akhil -2
190. Andrew McDonald -7
191. Unmukt Chand -8
192. Ramesh Powar -9
193. Umesh Yadav -9
194. Love Ablish -10
195. Pankaj Singh -15
196. Ray Price -15
197. Kamran Khan -15
198. Abrar Kazi -15
199. Nayan Doshi -20
200. Joginder Sharma -35

 

[Borges]

Amidst the gloom brought about by a cascade of appalling revelations of the depressing state of cricket in India, there is a silver lining - the IPL is going down, down, down.

The TV viewership data for the week ending 21st May is out, and the numbers are delightful. The nine matches during the week had an average TVR of just 2.77, with just one game (Mumbai vs Rajastan) scraping 4. Two matches played on the weekend (Saturday), one of which (Punjab) was crucial in determining the qualifiers for the playoffs had TV ratings of well under 2.


Also some sane voices from people who are willing to call a spade a spade are beginning to be heard:

It is the player’s prerogative to decide if he wants to rest during the IPLor India’s tour. If a player rests during an Indian tour, then the selectors should be strong enough not to select that player for future tours.

When the players have been bought like slaves at an auction, they just can’t have rights. ... Dhoni will take a break from international cricket, but you bet he won't rest while turning out for the Chennai Super Kings, which is controlled by the president-elect of the BCCI, Srinivasan. ....It’s the BCCI which has to be taken to task. Is it using the IPL to actually promote cricket or to add to its coffers? Absolutely nobody, neither the BCCI nor the franchisees nor the players nor the official broadcaster is in it to promote the game.

 

[Bun]

Amidst the gloom brought about by a cascade of appalling revelations of the depressing state of cricket in India, there is a silver lining - the IPL is going down, down, down.

The TV viewership data for the week ending 21st May is out, and the numbers are delightful. The nine matches during the week had an average TVR of just 2.77, with just one game (Mumbai vs Rajastan) scraping 4. Two matches played on the weekend (Saturday), one of which (Punjab) was crucial in determining the qualifiers for the playoffs had TV ratings of well under 2.


Also some sane voices from people who are willing to call a spade a spade are beginning to be heard:

wonder how mnay domestic comp have even half of tvr...

and glad to seeespn cricinfo expecting an average bangalorean sit up and watch punjab take on rajasthan....

 

[indiaholic]

@ Jan
Try searching on the net. You may find a few places where you can watch live cricket. Nobody should be subjected to just watching the IPL.

 

[Dissector]

Actually I think IPL 4 has been fairly successful considering it immediately followed a huge World Cup. While overall ratings were moderately lower, the ratings for the final were actually higher than last year's. I have no doubt overall ratings will improve next year. Anyway the IPL is on balance a good thing for Indian cricket. It's the best thing that's ever happened to Indian domestic players who can now reasonably expect to retire comfortably after their cricket careers.

 

[ankitj]

How can any sincere cricket follower defend IPL in its current format and length is beyond me. 74 matchs FFS!

 

[vcs]

How can any sincere cricket follower defend IPL in its current format and length is beyond me. 74 matchs FFS!

You can't. Way, way overkill.

 

[Jono]

I didn't watch any of the playoffs barring the first 10 overs of the final when I fell asleep.

I watched most of the first 15-20 matches, and then slowly but surely got bored.

The fact that I lost interested and cbf'ed watching the matches that really counted is an indictment on this year's IPL.

Watched all previous finals with great interest.

 

[Blaze 18]

How can any sincere cricket follower defend IPL in its current format and length is beyond me. 74 matchs FFS!

Agree.

 

[jan]

@ Jan
Try searching on the net. You may find a few places where you can watch live cricket. Nobody should be subjected to just watching the IPL.

I usually get to live streams in really poor quality (ridiculously low resolution plus laggy) and on suspicous web addresses. Very often such a page doesnt work the next time I access it.
There are a few bars downtown that show Skysports and one or two of them actually may show cricket instead of footie. And in one of them they even turn sound on I heard

I borrowed Ashes 2005 dvd to watch some white & red

How can any sincere cricket follower defend IPL in its current format and length is beyond me. 74 matchs FFS!

Well it was awfully long and I didnt quite understand why. I cant imagine somedody could have watched all the matches and honestly I got two matches confused sometimes when talking about ipl to someone. Also I assume the number of matches rises every season?

 

[ankitj]

Well it was awfully long and I didnt quite understand why. I cant imagine somedody could have watched all the matches and honestly I got two matches confused sometimes when talking about ipl to someone. Also I assume the number of matches rises every season?

It's mainly to serve the commercial interests. If you have a short format where a team gets knocked out after playing 2-3 matches, the owners of the team will have much less chances of earning their share of revenue. So they make it so long that it's pretty much immaterial if you get to top 4 from a commercial point of view. All teams are guaranteed as many as 14 matches over 50 days irrespective of how they perform. Given how easy it is to figure this commercial logic, the whole thing becomes a huge farce (bigger than it already is with clubs being pitted against one another). No one could be bothered who wins, including the captains of the teams. Just check what Dhoni said about the emotional drain of fans. That gave away more about his own state of mind, tbh.

 

[Bun]

Yeah take it from me, it's been way too overkill! When Modi was around it was better, this is just ridiculous...

 

[Blaze 18]

Modi wanted two IPLs per year.

 

[Bun]

Modi wanted two IPLs per year.

which became the CLT...

still I'd take two instalments spread over two parts of the year than one ****ing 70-match long streak...

 

[Blaze 18]

I'd be happy with zero matches TBH.

 

[Jono]

Can you believe this thing was supposed to be 94 matches? Pathetic.

Sharda Ugra: Moving season for the IPL | Opinion | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo

Why fans were not emotionally involved in the 2011 IPL | Specials | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo

 

[vcs]

Can you believe this thing was supposed to be 94 matches? Pathetic.

Sharda Ugra: Moving season for the IPL | Opinion | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo

Why fans were not emotionally involved in the 2011 IPL | Specials | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo

Yeah, that was how I calculated it initially, with everyone playing everyone else home and away. Thank goodness it wasn't quite that bad.

 

[Bun]

biggest issue was its timing.... nation was already saturated with euphoria over winning the wc. and they've had more than thier dose of intense cricket with usual razzmatazz... ipl then came, didnt add anything, actually eroded sum of the existing brand equity by rearranging the squads. there ois a limit to people's perseverance.


I think by the time the nxt ipl rolls around, the level of xpectation will be much higher...


I wouldnt mind the ipl, and going by numbers that matter, it has been a success.... I am nt going to judge it by a silly indicator like trp. but heck, this ipl is the least in terms of minutes i've watched and folllowed, and perhaps for first time I missed a tendulkar match altogether, ie, completely forgot it was on, anf wierdly didnt feel half bad abt it either.




we the indian spectators need a break from our own superstars ffs. we need to feel the absence and rekindle over love. it will be there forever, but needs its time to itself.


in that sense, the break has been a boon. bring on the wi series, for it will be academically gud to follow without having to tug at our already exhausted emotional strings, and then there'll be the english when we are ready!