The Grand Start- IPL

by Harshdip Singh

When you talk about the start of IPL, one would normally be thinking about the Pitbull performance or the Deepika dance on the opening ceremony!! I will not be mentioning SRK here because he is already banned from Wankhede stadium last year for misbehavior, and won’t be a surprise if he gets banned from Eden Gardens too for his performance in the ceremony.
But wait, this was not about the opening ceremony, that wasn’t anything even closely related to cricket.
The grand start was the first delivery bowled by the retired-but-loved-boy Brett Lee to our young sensation who had captained the U-19 team to win the World Cup recently, Unmukht Chand.
‘A perfect outswinger with the new ball’- is what you would call that technically;  Unmukht lifted his bat for a drive and by the time his bat completed the follow through, the off stump was uprooted from the ground. Yes, an Australian removing our youngest love in the first ball should be sad, but WHOOAAA… This is IPL.. The home crowd goes berserk .
Eden Gardens, Kolkata could not have been a better venue to start the IPL in.
And then in came the skipper, Jayawardene to join David Warner out in the middle. You have a feeling that Mahela Jayawardene of Delhi Daredevils may do what Rahul Dravid did to the Indian Team. After all he has the same class and bats at the same position as Dravid.
And then started a building partnership by the foreign players of the team. Going smooth, hitting the odd boundaries, taking the cheeky singles, running the two’s hard.
But then, you have the Man-of-the-Series of last IPL, the mystery man, Sunil Narine to bowl in the powerplay’s last over. You just have to keep expecting something special to happen in every bowl bowled by Sunil Narine. And it
happened in the fourth ball of the over. A vicious snake turn to David Warner got his outside edge to Kallis at First slip.
Wickets falling continuously at the other end of Jayawardene made it very difficult for Delhi Daredevils. So with 66 runs from Mahela, Delhi ended with 128 in their 20 overs.
A below-below par score. As expected, Kolkata rode on a good batting from Gautam Gambhir and way on their home. Sunil Narine was named the Man-of-the-Match, definitely not for his bored expressions.
So here goes the first match of the IPL: The highlights were aggression followed by a smile from Brett Lee, the too-easy-to-get-bored looks from Sunil Narine and the excited Captaincy from Gambhir and were something to look at.
Stay tuned for the next match posts here.
And let us know the feedback and stories on IPL that you would like to know more.

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