Much improved Delhi resemble the Deccan Chargers of IPL2

The fifth edition of the IPL has brought much needed relief relief. My favourite team – the Delhi Daredevils – are contenders once again. The overall TV ratings of the tournament may have gone down but they have skyrocketed in my household and I really pray that they stay that way.

The reasons for the change are easy to see. The batting is much improved. Sehwag has been Sehwag, Pietersen has played like the man who Vijay Mallya had in mind when he made the first 2 million bid in the IPL and Mahela Jayawardene adds a calm in the middle-order which Delhi have always lacked. Irfan Pathan has started to remind us why he was once batting up the order for India and all in all, this team is a far cry from the two man army they were last year.

The bowling department is also looking healthier. Pathan, Morkel and Umesh Yadav look a fearsome pace troika, as Mumbai found out recently. Nadeem has been a pleasant surprise and the likes of Ajit Agarkar and Avishkar Salvi have not been required too often.

Some glaring weaknesses remain though.

Delhi are a very top heavy side and carry many passengers in the side – players who cannot be expected to make a winning contribution. The lack of batting depth was exposed in the last game against Pune. And in spite of Nadeem’s encouraging performance, Daredevil fans wince every time the fourth or fifth bowler comes on.

But in spite of their lack of balance, Delhi can still feel reasonably confident of going all the way.

They just need to draw inspiration from the Deccan Chargers of IPL2, a team with similar lack of depth which ran the hot form of 6 players all the way to the title. Rohit Sharma, Herschelle Gibbs and Adam Gilchrist carried almost all the batting load and RP Singh, Pragyan Ojha and Fidel Edwards did the heavy lifting in the bowling department.The team from Hyderabad  got very little from their other players but the superb form of their super six carried them past the finish line.

A lack of depth can derail a team in a test series or a 50 over tournament. But teams can manage in the compressed Twenty-20 format as long as the big guns are firing.

Delhi have shown so far that they can copy Deccan’s template.  They can manage with their limitations and emulate the Chargers if their big guns – the  likes of Sehwag, Jayawardene, Pietersen, Pathan, Umesh Yadav and Morne Morkel – can continue to perform at high levels right throughout the tournament. This is exactly what Deccan’s super six managed to do.

There is another ominous portent for the Delhi Daredevils.

This team has one more thing in common with the Deccan side of season 2 – the presence of Venugopal Rao. Venu is much reviled but he could well be the lucky charm and become the first player to win IPL titles with two different but very similar teams.

Should the Delhi Daredevils retain any players for IPL 4?

The cost of retaining 4 players would be 4.5 million dollars. Let’s look at the current cost of the players Delhi would want to retain. These are the names most of the fans also want.

Virender Sehwag – 833,750

Gautam Gambhir – 725,000

Amit Mishra – NA

Ashish Nehra – NA

Dinesh Karthik – 525,000

Dirk Nannes – NA

AB de Villiers – 300,000

Daniel Vettori – 625,000

The salary will go up from 6 million for the last 3 editions to 10 million for IPL 4. It will be reasonable to assume that the cost of the most wanted players would almost double. The likes of Tendulkar, Pollard, Dhoni, Symonds and Shane Watson would fall in this category. They can become the franchise player around which the team can be built.

Unfortunately, none of the players in the current Delhi squad falls in this category. And that is true for Virender Sehwag as well. His record in the IPL and other twenty-20 cricket isn’t that awe inspiring. That is why the squad retention formula is unfair for teams like Delhi who don’t have any super expensive players and boon for the likes of CSK and MI.

Delhi has a number of middle rung players whose value will appreciate by roughly 50 %. Therefore, retention will only make sense for Delhi if they had 4 players whose current cost was around 3 million and they were the incumbents Delhi wanted to hold on to. I cannot identify 4 such players.

One needs to analyze whether the same players will cost more or less in the IPL auction.

By not retaining anyone, Delhi will have the largest kitty to play around with in the auction and that will come in handy when we go after the match-winners that we lacked in the last 3 editions.

There is another reason why Delhi should rebuild (by not retaining anyone).

Delhi had one of the finest sides in the last 3 editions and was always near the top but they always faltered in the critical games. They lost two semi-finals and winner takes all game in the third season. Would you rather stick with the same guys and continue be just good or change the backbone and the DNA of the side and go for the jugular. I would prefer the latter.

This changed philosophy will be implemented by getting at least a couple of the big time stars – match winners who will win us the games we have always ended up losing. This will not be easy. Such players are few and most of them are already part of other teams – and as such will not be available for bidding. But a few of them will be and Delhi will have to go after them aggressively. And this is where the extra 4.5 million will come in handy.

But there is an alternate argument as well.

There is only a limited pool of quality Indian players. If every other team retains 3 Indian players, then 21 of them would be gone by the time the auction begins. There will be a big fight for the remaining Indian players. That would shoot up the value of the likes of Sehwag and Gambhir and Delhi’s strategy of not retaining anyone would rebound on them.  Delhi would either end up paying more for Indian players and not have the top class foreigners or get their match- winners but struggle to fill the 7 spots for Indian players. Either way it will be disaster.

But is this likely to happen?

Or will teams suffer from the same dilemma as the Daredevils and take a chance in the auction.  Let’s try and predict the strategy of the other sides and get a sense of the top Indian players who would be available for auction. That will tell us how risky it will be for Delhi to retain no one and go all out in the auction.

Players in bracket are the ones we assume they will retain. We are also assuming that by the time the season begins, somehow KXP and RR will be back in the fray. If they are not, then even better – all their players would be available.

MI (Sachin, Harbhajan and Zaheer and Pollard/Malinga) – Abhishek Nayar, Saurabh Tiwary, Ambati Rayudu, Shikhar Dhawan, R Sathish and Dhawal Kulkarni.

CSK (Dhoni, Raina, Badrinath or Ashwin or Murali Vijay) – At least 2 out of Badrinath, Ashwin and Vijay, Parthiv Patel, Balaji, Gony, Shadab Jakati and Sudeep Tyagi.

KXP – This is another team which will find it difficult to identify 3 Indians and one foreigner who are worth 4.5 million and as a result everyone will be available. Yuvraj, Chawla, Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, Ramesh Powar and VRV Singh.

KKR – They are in the same boat as KXP- Ganguly, Ishant, Dinda, Jaidev Unadkat, Manoj Tiwary, Wridhiman Saha, Murali Karthik and Agarkar

DC (They could consider retaining Rohit Sharma, Pragyan Ojha, RP Singh and Andrew Symonds. This is a quartet worth 4.5 million. Their international form might be patchy but they have been superb in the IPL) – T Suman, VVS Laxman and Harmeet Singh.

RR (Could possibly go with Yusuf Pathan, Ravindra Jadeja, Naman Ojha and Warne or Watson. This is a money conscious side which doesn’t prefer to get into a bidding game) – Munaf Patel and Siddhartha Trivedi.

DD – Sehwag, Umesh Yadav, Gambhir, Dinesh Karthik, Ashish Nehra, Amit Mishra, Pradeep Sangwan and Rajat Bhatia.

RCB ( Could go with Anil Kumble, Virat Kohli, Manish Pandey or Robin Uthappa and KP or Kallis or Ross Taylor) – Manish Pandey or Robin Uthappa, Dravid, Vinay Kumar, Pankaj Singh and Abhimanyu Mithun

There are around 45 players available and that is the minimum number required to just fill the quota of 7 Indians in the playing eleven for each team. As a result, the bidding will be intense and major money will be thrown around for the Indians.

Delhi could still make this work – provided they play the auction well and do their scouting well.

They have done both well in the past. They had one of the strongest and deepest sides in the last 3 editions and managed to do that without overpaying for anyone. They got bargains for both Indians and foreign players. Case in point being the likes of Gambhir, Karthik, Collingwood, Mohd Asif and McGrath.

They also unearthed unknown or less well-known players who served them well. Umesh Yadav, Pradeep Sangwan, David Warner and Dirk Nannes fall in this category.

A repeat performance will ensure that Delhi can bid aggressively for the big guns and fill the rest of the squad with bargains and new talent. This was the route taken by the Chargers in season 2 and 3.

Delhi has their destiny in their own hands. They can either play safe or take a riskier approach to build a stronger side. And depending on that, they can decide whether to retain 4 players or go all out in the IPL player auction.

The player retention formula for IPL4 makes no sense at all

We finally know the player retention formula that will be used for the 2011 IPL Season.

Each of the existing teams will be allowed to retain up to 4 players with a maximum limit of three Indian players and there will be fixed salary cap amount that will be deducted for each player retained, irrespective of the actual salary paid to that player. The new teams of Pune and Kochi will also be allowed to pick 4 players before the players are auctioned for the 2011 season. These players should not have been part of any of the eight teams for the first 3 seasons. The same salary cap amounts will be deducted for these players.

Part of the logic for the player retention formula seems to be – ostensibly – to create a level playing field; to ensure that the new franchisees are not at a disadvantage as compared to the existing sides. This seems to be the reason why, the earlier formula – of retaining 4 Indian and 3 foreign players – has been dumped. Not that it has pacified the supporters of the new sides, who feel that the current number is still too high and the retention formula has been tailored for the benefit of CSK and MI, so that they can retain MS Dhoni and Sachin Tendulkar respectively.

Is the need for a level playing field justified?

No, and for the simple reason that well, new teams are ‘NEW’. They have the leeway to go through the learning curve and learn the ropes of building a successful franchisee and competitive cricket team. They are starting from scratch. They can afford to make mistakes. They are not expected to challenge for the title right away. But that is not the case with the older sides. They cannot go through another round of building their teams from scratch and undoing whatever good work they have done in the last three years. Their teams are under pressure to win now. They are not in the same boat as the newer sides. So why create a level playing field then?

Look back on the last Champions League. The IPL sides went from hopeless also-rans in the first edition to eventual champions in the second edition. That happened because an additional year of playing with each other improved team chemistry and moulded the players into a unit. We now have 8 teams who have all travelled a long way towards becoming well-knit competitive sides. The presence of such sides leads to fascinating cricket. We love to see individual performers but there is nothing more exciting than watching two sides play a competitive high quality cricket match. By trying to create a level playing field, we are undoing all the cricket knowledge that teams have acquired over the last three years.

We are also punishing the good sides and rewarding the poor ones. A team like CSK has fine tuned its strategy of playing all rounders and three spinners. They have the resources to execute this strategy to perfection. Others like MI and DC have been rewarded for taking a chance with domestic talent. On the other hand KXP is stuck with a sulking, over-weight Indian star and an Indian international paceman whose theatrics are self destructive. CSK has a clear advantage over KXP. This advantage was not built overnight. It was the result of careful planning and hard work done over three years. But in trying to create a level playing field, this advantage will be gone in a jiffy.

In the current formula, the cap figure allocations for retained players are completely illogical. How can the actual salary differ from the cap figure? There is no precedent in the world of professional sports for such an allocation. More than anything else, it is this allocation which gives an undue advantage to CSK and MI and any other side which has players on very high salaries and plans to retain them. It will penalize teams which retain players on lower salaries. MI could retain Pollard as their second player. Pollard’s salary will easily be more than the cap number allocated for the second player (1.3 million) and that gives the team from Mumbai an unfair advantage. They could easily end up over-utilizing their player retention cap.

Now that we agree that a level playing field is not required, what changes should have been made in the player retention formula; other than scrapping the fixed cap allocations?

To do that, let’s first look at how this works in the professional leagues in North America – the IPL is loosely based on them in terms of allowing new teams in the league and having a need to redistribute talent.

When new teams come in, there is an expansion draft. Each of the current teams is supposed to nominate players for the expansion draft. The number of players nominated is generally close to 30% of the roster – say 4 or 5 player when your squad strength is 14. All the nominated players go into the hat and the new teams, called expansion sides pick from it. The cap number depends on the salary given to them. The players who remain unselected in the expansion draft are free to go back to their original teams. Everything else stays the same. The regular draft happens for new players coming into the league, players get transferred and free agents pick and choose new teams for themselves. You don’t turn the league on its head to accommodate a new team. You give the new sides a bunch of players to get started with. The newer teams get high draft picks so that they can get the best of the new players joining the league.

If we were to borrow from American sports, then the current teams should have been allowed to retain up to ten of their current players (broken into 4 foreign players, 3 Indian internationals and 3 from the domestic players category) or nominate 4 foreign players and 4 Indian players for the expansion draft. This is just one set of numbers. The governing council could have come up with another set but care must have been taken to ensure that the current teams retain their core and don’t have to undergo a major transformation.

What else could have inspired the decision to retain 4 players only?

For one, it will lead to another cracker of an auction with almost all the players going back into the pool. The team owners love the auction and the BCCI will be giving them another chance to play their favourite game. While the owners are going to love it, the fans will hate it. The massive allegiance changing exercise could lead to temporary insanity. The apparel companies will be smiling. Diehard fans will need to get new replica jerseys. I will have to re-write the article I wrote about the players the Daredevils should retain under the 4 Indians and 3 foreigners policy.

The men who run the IPL keep saying it’s inspired by the NBA. I don’t see how. Well, unless they are referring to the cheerleaders.

Can Sehwag and Dilshan play together for the Daredevils now?

We are now almost over all the brouhaha that stemmed from Suraj Randiv’s deliberate no-ball to deny Virender Sehwag a much deserved century. But this episode isn’t over for two of the main characters and the IPL side which employs them both. The Delhi Daredevils, Virender Sehwag and Tillekratne Dilshan have an important decision to make before the teams are finalized for the next IPL season.

There is no denying the fact that Randiv’s act was extremely unsporting and Virender Sehwag was non-too-pleased about it. It is also now known that the origins of the wicked act can be traced back to Tillekratne Dilshan’s brain. It’s reasonably safe to assume that Sehwag and Dilshan haven’t got together for a drink after the match and won’t be doing so in the near future either.

This raises the important question – can the two co-exist harmoniously in the Delhi Daredevils side as the team attempts to recover from its dismal showing in season 3?

This is a question which has to be answered collectively by the two players and the team management.

The frightening scenario for the team is this.

Suppose both end up playing for Delhi next season. Then there will be times when the two will be at the crease together. In such a situation, it is likely that Sehwag will have to be required to run hard for Dilshan’s runs. If he does that, he could end up helping Dilshan get to a 50 or even a 100 – a milestone he was denied in the most unsporting manner possible. Is it impossible to fathom that the devil will take over Sehwag and he will find it convenient to simply run Dilshan out?

And what if the Delhi fans( most of whom are Indian and Sehwag fans) decide to heckle Dilshan? Fans from other teams could join in as well.

Do the Daredevils want to take that chance ?

The easy way out is to cut Dilshan and retain Sehwag. But in doing so, the Daredevils will be letting go of a fine T-20 player – the kinds it is difficult to find and they can ill afford to lose.

Cant they appeal to the players’ professionalism and their desire to win and ensure that they bury the hatchet and join forces for the common cause?

They can take heart from the example of Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo.

The Portuguese tricked the referee into sending off his club mate at the quarter final stage of the 2006 World Cup. England ended up losing and Rooney was vilified by the English fans. Man Utd and Alex Ferguson faced the same dilemma that is now facing the Daredevils. But Fergie didn’t care if Ronaldo was persona non grata in England after the match. He protected both players loyally and somehow managed to get them to forget the World cup episode and work together for the club. They ended up winning the League title for United.

So, can the Daredevils take heart from Man Utd’s example and replicate their success?

The answer, sadly, for Daredevils supporters like me, looks more like a no. For the simple reason that we don’t have anyone closely resembling Alex Ferguson in the Delhi side. He had spotted and nurtured the careers of both Ronaldo and Rooney and had a father figure like influence over them. Moreover, professional leagues are far more important for a footballer ( as compared to a cricketer) and being at Manchester United was quite clearly the best situation for both Ronaldo and Rooney.

Dilshan and Sehwag are in a far different situation. Their performances in the IPL have no bearing on their international careers. Dilshan could easily join one of the new franchisees. They don’t have the motivation to stick together and aren’t going to gain a lot, in personal terms, from the fruits of their combined efforts.

Which means that the Daredevils would be taking a huge gamble by deciding to stick with both of them.

There is more than just a semi-final spot at stake for Delhi against Deccan

If Punjab beat Chennai, then Delhi would be assured of a semi-final spot before they take on the Deccan Chargers at home. It will save them the prospect of going into a pressure cooker, winner takes all game against the red-hot team from Hyderabad. But Delhi will be advised to treat this game as one, if they intend to finally break their semi-final hoodoo and make the IPL finals.

And here’s why

Because if they win, they will finish second in the points table and avoid the mighty Mumbai Indians in the semis. The Daredevils have been convincingly beaten by the Indians in both their league encounters and should go all out to avoid their nemesis in the semis. MI will be an even tougher nut to crack because the semis are in Mumbai and the Indians are virtually unbeatable at home.

A defeat to DC will also mean that the Daredevils will go into the semis short on confidence and low on form, having lost 4 out of their final 5 games and limping to a win in the fifth. A win on the other hand will give them a two match winning streak over two quality teams and equip the side with loads of self-belief before the knock-out stages. The difference in the state of mind could make all the difference as Delhi will attempt to make the finals for the first time.

By beating DC, Delhi will avoid Mumbai in the semis and be in the right frame of mind as they approach the semi-finals. Together, it will improve their chances of making the finals substantially.

Gautam Gambhir needs to stop making excuses and start delivering as a captain

Gautam Gambhir has made all kinds of excuses for his side’s mediocre performance in IPL3. Most recently he blamed the Kotla pitch for the Daredevils’ collapse against Punjab. This came after a run of home wins on the same Kotla pitch had propelled Delhi into a comfortable position in the points table. After those home victories, Gambhir had raved about knowing his home conditions well. He said after the win over KKR, “We know how to play on such a track, it’s difficult for a new team to adjust to this pitch.” Therefore, his sudden volte-face on the Kotla pitch was clearly nothing more than a poorly disguised attempt at hiding his team’s shortcomings. And now that Delhi have lost away from home, their captain’s Kotla excuse looks lamer still. Worse for Gambhir, the Mumbai defeat once again exposed his shortcomings as a tactician and a leader. It’s high time he stopped looking for excuses and started shouldering more responsibility.

Delhi’s match against Mumbai was very crucial and they needed to be on top of their game. Batting collapses had robbed Delhi of a chance to win two eminently winnable games against KKR and KXP. They needed to strengthen their batting and they did so by bringing in AB de Villiers to replace Mithun Manhas but unnecessarily messed around with their bowling attack. While bringing in Andrew McDonald in place of Farvez Maharoof was justifiable, Saurabh Ladda’s inclusion defied any kind of logic. He had been Delhi’s worst bowler in the tournament and lacked the pedigree for such a high- stakes encounter. Moreover, it didn’t make sense to play a second specialist leg spinner when Amit Mishra was already in the eleven. If Delhi felt that they needed a second spinner, they should have just stuck with Daniel Vettori.

While Ladda’s inclusion can be partly blamed on the team management, Gambhir was fully responsible for his poor utilization. The rookie was brought on to bowl for the first time in the 18th over when the heat was on and Kieron Pollard was trying to blast the ball into the orbit. Gambhir compounded that mistake by giving Andrew McDonald the final over. He could have easily bowled Ladda in the middle overs and saved Sangwan for the end, thus saving himself the choice of feeding a rampaging Pollard with the perfect dose of McDonald’s military medium. If he was so sure that the pitch will turn and his squad needed an extra leggie, then why didn’t he bowl him when the time was right. He didn’t have the confidence to bowl either of his leggies in the last over, after picking two of them, and had finished the overs of his quicker men. How’s that for astute captaincy.

When Delhi batted their explosive start created the perfect platform for Gambhir to guide his side to victory. Their asking run rate after the power play was 8.21 and there was absolutely no pressure on Gambhir to take any kind of risk. Instead, Gambhir tried to jump out and confuse Harbhajan and got beaten himself. His dismissal sparked another batting collapse and Delhi were humbled in a match where they had dominated the early part of both innings.

It is unclear whether Gambhir’s batting is suffering from the strains of captaincy or whether his poor form is affecting his captaincy. Whatever it is, he doesn’t look comfortable in the hot seat. And his post match comments are just making him look worse. Delhi still have a good chance of making the semis with their net run rate being the third best among the 5 teams having 12 points each. But to make the last four, they will need their captain to step up to the plate. Gautam Gambhir could make a good start by first forgetting about making excuses.

How Delhi’s Indian bowlers could add muscle to their batting

With the return of Ashish Nehra, Delhi’s flock of Indian bowlers has started to look quite healthy. In addition to the India star, Pradeep Sangwan and Umesh Yadav are also bowling well and there is the untested option of Yo Mahesh as well; although it won’t be advisable to try him out at this crucial stage. The quintet of Nehra, Sangwan, Yadav, Rajat Bhatia and Amit Mishra are all bowling well and this abundant choice of 5 Indian bowlers gives the team management the leeway to utilize their foreign resources to reinforce their current Achilles heel : their batting.

The all-round skills of Collingwood, Vettori and Maharoof had given flexibility and balance to the side, adding depth to their batting and bowling. However, the longer looking batting line-up failed in the in the last two games and as a result the Daredevils find themselves in a tight situation after being in a comfortable second position just a couple of games back.

Kedar Jadhav had a string of failures after his half century on debut and was replaced by Mithun Manhas who did reasonably well to score 26 against the KXP. With due respect to the Ranji Trophy veteran, he isn’t the kind of batsman you would want at no six. He isn’t explosive and cannot really force the pace in the end overs.

However, Mithun Manhas was the only other Indian batsman in the squad and Delhi had no other choice but to replace Jadhav with him. They had some fine batsmen on the bench but none of them were Indian.

The only other option was to reallocate their foreign resources – play one fewer foreign bowler and one more batsman.

And thanks to Nehra’s return, this reallocation can now be done without compromising the bowling attack.

Delhi have a number of ways of doing this depending on their opponents and the nature of the pitch.

They could drop Maharoof or Vettori and play Sangwan or Yadav in their place. They could even drop Bhatia and play both the quicker bowlers if the wicket is bouncy enough. They already have the slow medium pace of Paul Collingwood. And the number six position could be filled in by AB de Villiers, Tillekratne Dilshan or even Moises Henriques. The South African and the Sri Lankan have flopped in IPL3 but the freedom of batting at number six position combined with the unburdening of the crucial number three slot could just be what the doctor ordered for them.

The playing eleven will continue to have two or more allrounders and at the same time have a substantial upgrade at the vital number six position.

It funny how the Delhi side has evolved. In IPL 1 , their batting revolved around Indians ( Gambhir, Sehwag and Shikhar Dhawan) while their bowling depended on imported talent ( McGrath, Asif and Maharoof).

Now the Delhi side could go into a game with a full set of Indian bowlers.

Delhi have the best wicket-keeper batsman in the tournament in Dinesh Karthik

There is no shortage of top class wicket keeper batsmen in the IPL. It has the likes of Kumara Sangakkara, Adam Gilchrist, MS Dhoni and Mark Boucher – players who are capable of walking into most elevens on the back of just their batting or wicket keeping skills alone.

But the player making the strongest claim to being called the best wicket keeper batsman in IPL 3 is the unheralded Dinesh Karthik.

Karthik leads all comers with 10 dismissals in 9 games including 6 stumpings. It is thanks to his efforts behind the stumps that Amit Mishra currently wears the purple cap with 14 wickets. Adam Gilchrist is in second place with 8 dismissals in 8 games.

When it comes to batting, Naman Ojha leads the way with 307 runs followed by Robin Uthappa with 232 and Karthik with 216.

To identify the best wicketkeeper batsman, we need to combine the wicket keeping and batting records to get some kind of total value of each player’s performance. To do that we will allocate 1 point for every run scored and 20 for every dismissal caused.

Based on this points system the ‘best wicketkeeper batsman’ leader board looks something like this

Dinesh Karthik (216 runs and 10 dismissals – 416 points in 9 games – 46 points per game)
Adam Gilchrist (178 runs and 8 dismissals – 338 points in 8 games – 42 points per game)
Naman Ojha (307 runs and 3 dismissals – 367 points in 9 games – 41 points per game)
Robin Uthappa (232 runs and 2 dismissals – 272 points in 9 games – 30 points per game)
Manvinder Bisla ( 198 runs and 2 dismissals – 238 points in 9 games – 26 points per game) – but Bisla has kept in only two and if we extrapolate his keeping average of 1 dismissal per game to 9 games , he ends up with 378 points and an average of 42 points per game)

No Dhoni or Sangakkara in the top 5

Karthik’s match winning effort against the Royals finally got his batting some much needed media and fan attention. Its time he also got credit for being the best wicket keeper batsman in IPL3 ahead of some far bigger names.

Delhi find new strength in their all-rounders

For the two and half seasons of the IPL, the Daredevils have played very few all-rounders. Amongst the foreign players, they have played Farvez Maharoof and Shoaib Malik while Rajat Bhatia has been the sole Indian all-rounder to turn out for them. Not surprisingly, the paucity of all-round men has affected the balance of the side. Their lower order has been brittle, crumbling on a few occasions and their captain has had few alternatives when his regular bowlers take a beating. But the superb performance of their specialists – the batsmen and the bowlers has more often than not made up for this deficiency.

It’s not that the team didn’t want any all-rounders. They couldn’t find any Indian ones but they picked up quite a few foreign all-rounders – Andrew McDonald, Moises Henriques and Paul Collingwood.

However, with a cap on the number of foreigners in the playing eleven and thanks to the continued excellence of De Villiers, Dilshan and Nannes, the foreign all rounders rarely got a look in.

Things would have continued in the same vein in IPL3 but the status quo was about to change.

First Gambhir and Nehra got injured, creating a dearth of quality specialists. Then De Villiers and Dilshan failed to get going with the bat. The combination of injury-related absence and lack of form on part of the specialists created the perfect situation to play more all-rounders. And then the defeat to the Chargers cruelly exposed Delhi’s lower order. When Dinesh Karthik got out, the Daredevils needed 15 off 10 balls with 4 wickets in hand – most teams would have fancied their chances in chasing such a target. The hapless Daredevils just managed 5 runs off the remaining 10 deliveries losing 3 wickets in the process. If all that wasn’t enough, Dirk Nannes also got injured.

The Daredevils had no choice but to play their all-rounders now.

Paul Collingwood and Andrew McDonald played the game against the Knight Riders and Farvez Maharoof joined them against the Royals. Suddenly Delhi looked a much more balanced side.

With the likes of McDonald and Maharoof coming in at number 7 and 8 respectively, their lower order looks far more robust – they should be able to finish close games. The bowling is also stronger – they don’t have any weak links which can be exploited by opposition batsmen.

And not that the all-rounders can take their places for granted. There is Moises Henriques to compete for the all-rounders spot and Nehra and Nannes will surely get a look in when they return.

Delhi’s discovery of their all-rounders bodes really well for them. They have the squad depth and versatility to play any kind of eleven depending on their opponent and the conditions. This kind of flexibility will keep their opponents guessing and will make it difficult for opposition captains to prepare tactics against them.

The all-rounders give them great balance and irrespective of who actually plays, it will be advisable to stick with atleast two all-rounders through the remainder of the tournament.