It was a slightly difficult day at the office in Mohali today. For once the Deccan Chargers’ batting line-up worked more or less as planned, with Gilchrist, Gibbs and Sharma scoring 144 between them. A final total of 175 would be very challenging for most sides to chase. Not so the Kings XI. Marsh and Sangakkara got them off to an excellent start, and though they faltered a little along the way the panic all came from the Chargers. Scott Styris in particular will rue being hit for 16 in the nineteenth over, including two sixes. I’m very impressed with little Piyush Chawla. He’s being touted as the future of Indian spin bowling, and certainly seems very capable, but he has proved a cool and competent batsman as well. For a tiny nineteen-year-old he hits very big indeed.

Those of you who think that cricket is a soft game needed to be watching the afternoon session at Old Trafford today. It saw a magnificent display of aggressive fast bowling from Jimmy Anderson. Ross Taylor coped well with it, limbo dancing under the short-pitched balls where necessary, and using the pace on the ball to help it to the boundary otherwise. Daniel Flynn, on the other hand, didn’t have the same degree of judgment. He tried to hook one that was headed for his nose… and missed. Fortunately his helmet grill took most of the impact, but he still lost a tooth and wisely went off for a bit of medical attention. That brought in Jacob Oram who, at 6′ 7″, finds it difficult to get out of the way. A few balls later Anderson hit him on the side of the helmet, and in the next over rapped him on the gloves twice. But Oram is a tough nut, and he hung in there, taking the bruises, until rain forced the players off for an early tea. Splendid stuff. None of this namby-pamby getting a free base for getting hit.

Oh my, really bad luck for Delhi and Kolkata. Their game today was washed out. That means that Kolkata now cannot qualify for the semi-finals. Delhi are still in with a chance. If they can win their final game against Mumbai, and the Indians don’t win both their other two games, then Delhi will go through. Mumbai need either to beat Delhi, or to beat both Bangalore and Rajasthan. All of those games are away. Sehwag might just still fancy his chances, but Tendulkar and his team have their fate very much in their own hands. Conceivably both could go through if Chennai lose both of their remaining matches (against the Royals and Chargers).

Today’s other match in the IPL should have been a formality. The increasingly demoralized Royal Challengers managed only 126 in their innings, and at 60-0 off 9 overs the Chennai Super Kings were cruising towards victory and a place in the semi-finals. Then Parthiv Patel got out; Dhoni came in to finish things off, and got himself out; panic set in. Wily old Kumble tied the Super Kings down with a fine spell of 3-14. And somehow, from a position of utter dominance, Chennai contrived to lose the game by 14 runs. Praveen Kumar showed just how to bowl a final over, conceding only 1 run. I’m delighted for Dravid who hasn’t had much help from his players along the way. Is it possible that Chennai will choke in their other two games, letting both Delhi and Mumbai into the semi-finals?

Wow. Just Wow! That was one of the craziest games of cricket I have ever seen.

Backtrack. The Punjab Kings came to Mumbai looking to cement their place in the semi-finals against a Mumbai team that has been performing better and better and needed a win themselves to keep their hopes alive. Punjab’s two young Australians, Shaun Marsh and Luke Pomersbach, did a fine job for their team, putting on 133 for the second wicket and helping establish a very competitive target of 189.

Interviewed at the start of the Mumbai innings, Preity Zinta revealed that she lives in Mumbai and is a huge Tendulkar fan. She can’t have been too upset, therefore, when the Little Master set about providing a masterclass in batting to help his team stay in the match. Some big hitting by Jayasuriya and Dwayne Smith provided the acceleration around Tendulkar’s solid foundation. For most of the game to looked like Mumbai would make it. But when you have to score at almost 10 an over you can’t afford to falter, especially late on.

The turning point came when Irfan Pathan bowled a bouncer to Robin Uthappa, hitting the batsman on the front of his helmet. Uthappa was OK to continue, but his brains must have been shaken up because he played a couple of poor shots and then got Tendulkar run out. At this point, panic set in. The normally reliable Shaun Pollock played a silly shot and was out first ball, Uthappa holed out in the deep, and it was all down to the tail.

Some good bowling by the Kings meant that Mumbai needed 19 to win off the last over, but they were by no means panic free themselves. VRV Singh’s first ball was a beamer that was called No Ball and went for six. The next ball also went deep, was dropped on the boundary, and went for four. There was more panic. There were silly run-outs. And the game ended with Yuvraj, not trusting his throw, running in and diving headlong into the stumps to run out the last Mumbai batsman off the last ball of the game to give Punjab the win by just one run.

And what does all of this madness mean? Well, Punjab look pretty safe. They need just one point from 3 games to ensure a semi-final berth. With a home game against the Chargers to come, that’s almost a foregone conclusion. Chennai also look safe as they have games against the two bottom teams yet to play. The final spot will be between Delhi and Mumbai, and it may all be decided when they play each other in Delhi on Saturday.

Another thoroughly professional performance by the Royals today as they booked their place in the semi-finals. Kolkata desperately needed a win to keep their hopes alive, but none of their batsmen could quite get going, and 147 seemed a competitive total only because the wicket seemed quite difficult to score on. And so it proved when Rajasthan batted. Asnodkar, Smith and Watson all went cheaply, as did Tanvir who had been promoted up the order to get quick runs when Asnodkar failed. But one of the great strengths of the Royals side is that they don’t panic. Mohammad Kaif and Yusuf Pathan batted beautifully for the victory – Pathan striking 48* off only 18 balls. If the game had gone on any longer he would have comfortably broken his record for the fastest 50 of the tournament.

I wrote yesterday about how the sides with the biggest-hitting batsmen were not doing well in the tournament. Today I thought I’d take a look at the leading wicket takers. RP Singh of the Deccan Chargers is top of the pile, but behind him come Tanvir and Warne of the Royals, and Pathan and Sreesanth of the Punjab Kings. Those happen to be the two teams that are heading the table. I don’t think it could be any clearer than that. Having top-scoring batsmen like Sehwag and Gambhir is all very well, but if you want to win at Twenty20 you need bowlers who can take wickets.

And finally, if you find all of this cricket boring, here’s a fun commercial for you from Nike. I particularly like the elephant and the umpiring statue.

There was another predictable result in the IPL today as the Delhi Daredevils handed out the latest thrashing for Bangalore. The Royals Challengers batted first and the innings would have been a complete disaster if not for a battling 52 from little Goswami, their reserve wicket keeper, and Misbah-ul-Haq smashing 24 off the final over. As it was, 155 looked almost competitive, unless Sehwag and Gamhir got a start. Well, guess what happened. By the time they were both out Delhi already had 100 on the board and they hadn’t finished the 9th over. From there Delhi strolled to a 5-wicket win.
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As expected, Mumbai disposed of the Chargers fairly easily today. They are starting to look good, but they do have a fairly tough final few games. I expect things will all be getting a bit nervous in the various team HQs.

Well there’s something different. Yesterday we had a game in Delhi abandoned due to rain. Today a match in Kolkata was abandoned due to a dust storm. This worked in favor of the Chennai Super Kings who won on Duckworth/Lewis. Actually, however, they should probably credit their win to Makhaya Ntini who took one of those odd hat tricks much beloved of statisticians. Ntini dismissed Ganguly with the final ball of his third over, and was then taken off. When he came back again some time later he dismissed Debabrata Das (breaking an 86-run partnership) and the dangerous David Hussey with his first two balls.
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It has been a rainy day all round at the cricket. Most of the day’s play at Lords was lost, and even in Delhi rain caused chaos. The Daredevils batted first, and Sehwag and Gambhir seemed to have set up a good foundation. Then Gambhir got out, and the rain came down. Much confusion later, the Kings XI were chasing 123 off 11 overs. Some big hitting by Yuvraj, Jayawardene and young Luke Pomersbach got them ahead of the rate, which is just as well as the rain came down again after 8 overs. Punjab were declared the winners on D/L, and they stay only one game back of the Royals in the table.
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Another emphatic win for the Royals today. Bangalore’s performances have been bad enough as it is, but almost everything good that the team has done to date has been done by Mark Boucher, and with him sidelined by an injury no one was expecting the Royal Challengers to put up a fight. Rajasthan batted first, with Asnodkar and Smith getting them off to a superb start, and Watson helping pile on the agony when Asnodkar got one thick edge too many. The wicket looked quite difficult to score on, and yet the Royals registered 197-1 in their 20 overs, thanks in large part to some abject fielding by the Challengers. The Bangalore resistance didn’t last long. They were 5-3 in no time, at which point I switched over to oggle at Nadal. Apparently Dravid played a swashbuckling 75* to further embarrass his teammates.
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One of the big surprises of the new test series is that Tuffers is a lot smarter than he makes out. His understanding of the game is well ahead of a lot of the commentary team, but also he’s very astute. Just now someone (CMJ I think, but it might have been Bloers, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention at the start) was in the process of saying something deeply sexist about the English women’s cricket team, and Tuffers gently and firmly turned the conversation away from physical appearance and onto cricketing prowess. I’m impressed.

Don’t look, Bollywood! It was a total disaster for the Knight Riders in Mumbai today. Kolkata batted first, and were all out for 67. Pollock took 3-12. Tendulkar was out for 0, but no one in Mumbai cared because Jayasuriya set about the Kolkata bowling and had the game wrapped up in less than 6 overs: 48 off 17 balls with 3 sixes. And that puts Mumbai up to fourth in the table, with a game in hand over the faltering Chennai in third.

Today’s IPL game between Delhi and Hyderabad was much more interesting than I expected. The Daredevils batted first and while Sehwag made another duck, Gambhir and Dhawan more than made up for it. 194 always looked like a difficult target. But the Chargers made a valiant attempt at chasing it down. Afridi, Sharma and Venugopal Rao all played good innings. Gibbs was a little slow, but he did hit Glenn McGrath for 2 sixes in an over. They always looked like they might just pull off a miracle, if only Sehwag didn’t have one final McGrath over up his sleeve. As it was Pidge did the business, dismissing Venugopal Rao with the first ball of his final over and exposing the Chargers’ tail. He left finishing the job to Amit Mishra, who picked up a hat trick in the final over to end with 5-17.

As I expected, much nonsense was talked on Test Match Special about the IPL. It was pretty clear the the whingeing was being done by people who haven’t actually been following the games. For example, it isn’t true that bowlers are irrelevant in Twenty20. Try telling that to Shoaib Akhtar. Or indeed Pollock, McGrath, Warne, Sreesanth, Mishra, etc. Nor is it true that so many balls are hit out of the park that batsmen will lose the skill of running between the wickets and fielding will become irrelevant. (Nor, indeed, are either of those things true in baseball, which the BBC pundits have clearly never watched.) In the “you just don’t get it” category was a complaint that it was a good thing that players should earn more money, but why did it have to be for playing Twenty20? And finally there was the inevitable demand that if there was going to be a Twenty20 Premier League then it ought to be in England. Sigh.

I should note, however, that Aggers wasn’t responsible for any of this. CMJ got to chair the IPL-bashing session. Aggers, on the other hand, it happily making an idiot of himself over the new England kit. So it is different? I don’t care. Why is it that some people would rather have test cricket die than have it played in any way differently to the way it was played when they were young?

Today is apparently National Work from Home Day in Britain. The people pushing this event might claim it is all about cutting down congestion on the roads and railways, and reducing carbon emissions, but everyone here knows that it is all about the first day of the first Test Match of the summer. England are due to face off against New Zealand at Lords in about 10 minutes time. Except, of course, it is pouring with rain over most of the country. This is entirely expected. The weather has been quite good for several days now, but faced with a major sporting event the British climate hardly ever fails to produce a good downpour. Next month we have Wimbledon, which means solid rain for two whole weeks.

One theory is that the endless rain is actually the gods weeping for the lack of soccer. The summer is a period of major psychological stress for many Britons. Sky Sports is so concerned about the mental health of its viewers that it has been broadcasting adverts reassuring them that the soccer season will start again in August.

I suppose I could turn on Test Match Special anyway, but I have an awful feeling that instead of the entertaining banter of yester-year all we will get is Aggers & co droning on about how awful Twenty20 cricket is and how there are too many overseas players in the English game. Ah Johnners, you are so sorely missed.

Happiness is breaking out all over Mumbai. Sachin Tendulkar is at last over his injury, and the Indians are now firing on all cylinders. Chennai batted first, and Shaun Pollock was his normal brilliant self, bowling 4 overs for just 9 runs. Dhoni did his best to rescue the innings, but 156 looked a bit short of what would be needed. As it turned out, it was absurdly short. The Little Master opened the innings with Sanath Jayasuriya. He took things easy, holding up one end while his partner did the big hitting. Tendulkar was eventually out for 12, but by that time Mumbai already had 82 runs and looked certain to win the game. While Robin Uthappa continued the anchor role, Jayasuriya accelerated. He made 114 runs, including 11 sixes, and hit 26 off five balls from the unfortunate Kapugedera. Mumbai won by 9 wickets with 6 overs to spare. That’s a massacre in anyone’s book. Chennai, it seems, are falling apart, though thanks to the early wins they got when Hayden and Hussey were available, they are still third in the table.