Best players vs Best players!!! One Great Team vs Another!!! Champions vs Champions!!!
That just sums it up for the Champions League. It’s a defining tournament which has heralded the Club Cricket rivalries for years to come. Is cricket going the football way? Well only time will tell. As for the first edition of the CL-T20, it was one heck of a tourney which brought out spirited and compelling performances on the cricketing field.
It was no wonder that another Aussie team walked away with the trophy. The sophisticated Oz machinery overpowered the fearless flair of the Caribbean. The two sides which were the favorites making to the semis were New South Wales and Victoria, as they had the perfect balance - team togetherness and skill. The other two semi-finalists were a surprise package. The Trinidad and Tobago team was the one which won over hearts of all the fans with their brand of fearless, stylish and heart-on-sleeve type of cricket. Their celebrations after the victories were so passionate and showed how much this tourney meant to them. After all, Sports is about Passion. The team from South Africa, Cape Cobras also displayed their efficient planning and execution to make it to the semis. In all, a perfect line-up for the knock out phase of the tourney.
My team, RCB, fared mediocre during this tourney. I watched all their matches in the ground and was shattered as we weren’t able to make it through to the semis. I don’t know why one player decides to have his own when playing against RCB during the opening match. It was Brendon McCullum during IPL-1 while this time it was JP Duminy.
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If you look at the statistics, RCB were a better team than Cobras for their first encounter. But one player’s genius took the game away from RCB. The second one against Otago Voltz was close to a perfect match with Kallis leading from the front with both bat & ball and Ross Taylor with his typical blitzkrieg at the end. Shift to the second round and whatever could go wrong in a match went wrong for RCB. First Kallis pulled out and then the batting collapsed leaving the bowlers to do with too much on a flat track. But true to their spirit, RCB fought back against the Delhi Daredevils. A superb bowling performance paved way for Ross to show the world who the Boss was at the Chinnaswamy stadium. This though did little to hide the disappointment of not making to the next round. The vociferous support and cheering for the home team was seen to be believed at Chinnaswamy. The atmosphere created by the fans was scintillating and the way they (actually we, as I was there too) created a superb ambience even though the team was already out of reckoning for Semis, before the match started, was just fantabulous.
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There were several valiant performances and while some stars were born, some others were reborn. Kieron Pollard was the stand out and I hope Mr. Mallya was watching. No matter how many power hitters we have in RCB it won’t be too bad to add another Match winner. His savage innings against NSW in the group stages catapulted him to the big league. The amazing, powerful yet seemingly effortless style of his big hitting won him legions of fans in this part of the world.
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Then the other star was Ross Taylor. The way the RCB fans showered their affections to him was seen to be believed. Every time he walked towards his fielding position near the boundary, the reception he received from the fans was deafening. I am sure that entire New Zeland together couldn’t have given him a better applause! The two other star performers for RCB were Jacques Kallis and a rejuvenated Robin Uthappa. Uthappa had played some good innings in KPL and carried forward the momentum to CL-T20. One hopes he carries the good work to the Ranjis and returns to IPL a better player.
In all, Champions League pitched some excellent teams against each other and drew many an eyeball from all over the world. It has set a very good trend of a truly international class tourney which brought the best out of many teams and individuals. Inexperienced youngsters and season campaigners gave it all to this tourney and rose to the occasion. After all, many of them have spent their entire careers playing in front of empty stadiums. This tourney gave them a chance to test themselves playing in front of thousands and challenge themselves more than anything.
As for the young players, they may return to hear the sound of their own strokes in empty arenas but they now know the adrenaline flow, the sheer passion and the atmosphere that awaits them if they push on from here. Don’t tell these guys that Champions League is irrelevant!
