It was in July 2015, when the Supreme Court-appointed Justice Lodha committee banned the Chennai Super Kings for two years for its alleged involvement in the 2013 spot-fixing and betting scandal, that a hashtag began circulating on Twitter: #NoCSKNoIPL.
A quick search of this hashtag even today would show you that fans of one of the IPL’s most successful and popular franchises are still reeling from the absence of the two-time champions. Some claim not to have watched a single ball of the ongoing season.
While these hardcore CSKians supposedly missed out on the action, there were others who pledged support to the new franchise, Rising Pune Supergiants, because the face of Chennai Super Kings, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, was now playing for them. The new team also had other former CSK players such as Ravichandran Ashwin, Faf du Plessis and Albie Morkel, and even appointed Stephen Fleming head coach (the former New Zealand captain had coached Chennai since the first season in 2008).
But mainly because of the Dhoni factor, Pune were labelled the new Chennai as the 2016 season began. It seemed to be going to plan as Dhoni’s new team, now in purple rather than yellow, thrashed defending champions Mumbai Indians by nine wickets in the season opener. However, it all went downhill from there, as the Rising Pune Supergiants managed to win only four more matches in the rest of the season and finished second from bottom.
The other new team
As Pune struggled, this season’s other new franchise, the Gujarat Lions, was quietly ticking off one win after the other. After starting the round-robin stage of the tournament with an air of authority, clocking six wins in their first seven games, they went through a minor mid-season slump. However, they ended the stage strongly, with three wins in their last four matches, to cruise into the playoffs at the top of the table.
Gujarat boast of one of the most explosive batting line-ups in the IPL, with Brendon McCullum, Dwayne Smith, Aaron Finch, Suresh Raina, Dwayne Bravo and Ravindra Jadeja. Except Finch, the five others are all former CSK players. Yet, this team was never considered the rebranded CSK. Not until now, at least.
Gujarat do not have a particularly strong bowling line-up, but have the street-smartness of Praveen Kumar and the reliability of Dhawal Kulkarni, two medium-paced bowlers capable of swinging the ball and keeping the batsmen guessing. Gujarat also have Dale Steyn, but the South African speedster has astoundingly played just one match in IPL9 despite being fit. Perhaps not so astoundingly, though, considering their overseas quartet – remember, only four are allowed per game – of McCullum, Finch, Smith and Bravo have done really well.
Leader of the pack
Leading the pack of Lions is the highest run-scorer in IPL history, Suresh Raina. The 29-year-old was the mainstay of Chennai’s batting line-up for eight seasons, scoring nearly 3,700 runs for them and never missing a single game. Handed the reins of a team after being led by Dhoni throughout his career, Raina floundered with the bat in the beginning before taking a one-match break to witness the birth of his first child.
The southpaw celebrated fatherhood by scoring two match-winning half-centuries – he had not hit a fifty in his last 30 T20 innings prior to this – in the Lions’ last two games of the season, which sealed their spot at the top of the table. It also ensured that Raina was the team’s leading run-scorer, with 397 in 13 matches.
Raina now has a chance to not only step out of Dhoni’s shadow, but blow it away, with his team being only two more wins away from an IPL title in their debut season. It would be incredible if they won it, considering they have topped the table with a negative net run-rate, which is only marginally better than the bottom-placed team, Kings XI Punjab.
Narrow wins, huge losses
This has happened because quite a few of Gujarat’s wins have been extremely narrow ones, three of them being last-ball finishes. Their defeats, on the other hand, have been by huge margins, especially the 144-run loss to Royal Challengers Bangalore, when Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers went berserk. This is the only dissimilarity between Gujarat’s campaign and Chennai's.
Gujarat will not have it easy in Tuesday’s qualifier against Bangalore, who have crashed their way into the playoffs by winning all of their last four matches. Raina and company will be up against probably the one batting line-up in the league that is more destructive than theirs, comprising Kohli, De Villiers and Chris Gayle. Kohli’s scores in RCB’s last four games are: 109, 75 not out, 113 and 54 not out.
And so, despite topping the table, the Lions will be the underdogs in Tuesday’s game. However, they should not be underestimated, considering no one really expected them to be in this position in the first place. They have quietly gone about doing their work throughout the season, even as you waited for them to slip up and fade away.