Page 169 - IPL1

T

he administrative capital of India, Delhi is not the
largest city in the country, nor the most historic, nor the most
glamorous. But it is a city that gets things done. By the end of
the inaugural DLF Indian Premier League season, observers
were very nearly saying the same thing about its cricket team:
only an uncharacteristic collapse to 87 all out in the semi-final in
Mumbai against Rajasthan Royals, the eventual winners, spoiled
what was otherwise a superb tournament for the Delhi-ites.

By the standards of most of the other teams, the Delhi Daredevils
were not flush with megastar cricketers. They had Virender
Sehwag, of course, to captain the side and swing his railway-
sleeper bat, which he did with predictable abandon. And they
had Glenn McGrath, who was the undisputed king of seamers

until he quit the Australian side last year, but proceeded
to remind everyone that the old maxim about class being
permanent and form temporary applies to some cricketers for
rather longer than it does to others. But generally this team
was composed of hardworking international stalwarts, most of
them earning a fee of somewhere between US $200,000 and US
$600,000 for their services, and several youngsters who caught
the eye as the tournament progressed. That may have been big
money to the man in the street, but it was hardly outstanding
in the bull market of the IPL, where the top ten salaries began
at a staggering US $800,000. Perhaps this lack of out-and-out
superstars helped explain why Delhi gelled so well as a team:
everyone felt wanted, no one ignored. It was the kind of ethos
McGrath would have understood perfectly from his time in
Australia’s democratic dressing room.

There was almost certainly another reason, and one that had
the pundits drooling in advance. The team’s nickname made
one think of colourfully dressed heroes flying through the air
to intercept speeding missiles, and when A. B. de Villiers and
Tillekeratne Dilshan were working the infield, that may not have
been so far from the truth. De Villiers’s fielding style resembled
that of Jonty Rhodes, which is not surprising given that Rhodes
has been coaching him in South Africa. His spring-heeled
work around the bat is so electrifying that it is easy to forget
he has played a lot of his cricket as a wicketkeeper, and could
well succeed Mark Boucher in that role for the Proteas when

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