WATCHING the Indian Premier League unfold in 2022, after all it has gone through in the past two years, I couldn’t help but reflect on how the T20 format of the game of cricket began. It started so innocently and has burgeoned into a great entertainment spectacle that is a massive money-spinner, not only to its players, but the industry associated with it.
In the late 90s, the English Cricket Board was concerned with dwindling gates at county matches that started it thinking along the lines of a reduced form of cricket. However, the 18 first-class counties plus Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) that formed the game’s powerbase at the time did not agree with the idea and it was shelved.
Nonetheless, by 2001, the financial concerns reached alarming proportions because of the continued drastic drop in attendance at the three-day first-class games. Survival was of paramount importance.
The ECB got to work, and scheduled interviews with a wide range of people, to help discover the reasons for the falling-away in attendance.
West Indian left-hander Shimron Hetmyer has left the Rajasthan Royals in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) to return home to Guyana for the birth of his first child.
"My stuff is still left in the room," the 25-year-old said in an interview, indicating that he will be returning to India to see out the rest of the IPL.
Royals are in third place and are looking like one of the better-placed teams to make the playoffs which are set to begin on May 24.
However, the player has not made himself available for the West Indies white-ball tours of the Netherlands and Pakistan starting later this month.
Hetmyer left Mumbai on Sunday morning on the back of another high-impact cameo - 31 not out off 16 balls against Punjab Kings that helped seal a chase of 190.
Watching proceedings on Friday at the Brabourne Stadium, you wondered if Mumbai Indians were in the middle of one. Kieron Pollard, finisher supreme, white-ball destroyer and bonafide T20 legend, seemed a pale shadow of the big-hitter he once was.
Tim David, among their costliest signings at the mega auction, meanwhile stepped up to play the kind of role Pollard has for more than a decade. It made you wonder why he’s played just four games this season when he could’ve easily played more. Remember, Mumbai fielded just three overseas players in one match, and two in another.
Where Pollard stuttered to 4 off 14, David blasted 44 not out from 21 balls. Where Pollard was diffident against spin – it seemed inevitable that Hardik Pandya would bring on Rashid Khan almost immediately as he came out to bat – David muscled the ball fearlessly despite the knowledge that it was on him to revive a stuttering innings, albeit on a belter of a surface.
West Indies cricket star Chris Gayle says he pulled out of this year’s Indian Premier League draw due to a lack of “respect” in his previous two seasons of the Twenty20 tournament.
The big-hitting self-styled “Universe Boss” has long been a popular fixture of the IPL, hitting the most sixes — 357 — of any player in the competition.
He played 10 matches for Punjab Kings in the previous COVID-hit edition before “bubble fatigue” forced him to leave.
“For the last couple of years, the way the IPL went about, I felt like I wasn’t treated properly,” Gayle was quoted as saying by the British daily The Mirror.
The India tour of the West Indies is expected to bowl off on July 22, with matches scheduled to take place in Trinidad, St Kitts, and the United States of America in the state of Florida.
India last toured in August 2019, where matches were held in Trinidad, Guyana, USA, and Antigua.
According to reports, the tour is expected to consist of three ODIs and five T20Is and should be the first major test for new West Indies skipper Nicholas Pooran. Pooran took charge of the team last week, following the retirement of all-rounder Kieron Pollard.
