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Rishabh Pant is a player we keep an eye on. We don’t write about him much at the minute, but we get the sense that we will. We were therefore interested to see where he ended up in the IPL auction and whether the teams valued him as highly as we do.
Delhi Daredevils bought him for $2.34m (about £1.65m).
“Great,” we thought. “Now what?”
Because this doesn’t lead us anywhere. We’ve never really felt much affinity with any particular IPL team and this is unlikely to change simply because one of them is now blessed with a Pant.
The Indian Premier League is, it seems to us – and bear with us if this seems a rather obvious statement of fact – an Indian competition.
What we mean by this is that with players going back into the hat once every few years, geography seems just about the best reason for latching onto a particular team.
If you live in Bangalore, support Bangalore. If you live in Delhi, support Delhi. Those of us who live in Manchester and have visited five of the eight cities housing teams don’t really have an obvious route in.
In many respects, the tournament is best viewed as an academic exercise, a resource allocation competition in which various groups spend their money and deploy their resultant playing staffs and whoever has the best plans wins.
We can get behind that. We rather like it. The mechanics of the various strategies and the way things will eventually pan out are very intriguing to us. Except without any sort of bias or hopes for one group to triumph over the others, it also feels a little flat.
What we’re left with is lab sport of the mind: valid and worthy, but sadly lacking the power to truly delight us or to really piss us off.
Let me try and narrow it down for yer maj. About half the teams are out because they have the temerity to have “king” or “royal” in their name, which not only challenges your claim to the throne, but also infringes on your copyright.
Mumbai is out because they call themselves the Indians, an unprecedented attempt to claim an entire country. Also, their captain is Rohit Sharma
David Warner is the star batsman for the Sunrisers, so I guess that eliminates them.
The Kolkata Knightriders must be out because they named themselves after a David Hasselhoff character.
This only leaves the Daredevils, and Pant is as good a reason as any to support them. I once supported Warwickshire for a whole season only because they had a guy called Dominic Ostler and I liked the name Ostler.
The Daredevils have also had many poor seasons now and would not doubt benefit from royal patronage.
I rushed over here to see some further commentary on Jofra “Jeffrey” Archer who has been sold for a huge amount. If I’m to put my foot through my screen in disgust, where shall I send the bill?
Never rush anywhere for anything, least of all here for news.
At least, not when there’s this sort of thing to write about…
Interesting pairing of headband and Nirvana t-shirt there, Jimmy.
Is ‘epic’ internet slang for vaguely amusing?
During the auction we saw Virender Sehwag drinking from a mug and we nearly wrote a whole thing about what might have been in the mug.
I think ‘epic’ uses the crude modern vernacular ‘e-‘ as a prefix for electronic, if that’s any help to you. So basically it’s one of these new digital photographs that they have now.
I picked Rajasthan Royals because I’m a huge fan of Warne (as a cricketer, not the personality) and he won the first season there. Seems a good enough reason as any even if I don’t really care how they go, or if the whole team gets suspended for a season or whatever.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/8368/scorecard/1116935/bangladesh-under-19s-vs-england-under-19s-5th-place-play-off-under-19s-world-cup-2017-18/
These urls are great aren’t they? Can just post a link and not have to explain it. It’s the anti-bitly.
You can consider following Chennai Super Kings, who have Mark Wood and his imaginary horse in the squad
Our feelings in this instance are marred by the fact that an IPL deal probably means the end of Wood’s Test career.
I feel the same way about the IPL, except for when Pune play, which is my home town. Unfortunately, they seem to get canned after a season or two. Ben Stokes played for us last year if that helps. I’ll keep an eye out for ‘Sehwag & Mug’. And Rishabh Pant is someone I track as well. There we go, 3 reasons part of why I follow this blog.