Page 174 - IPL1

Boucher finally retires. Dilshan, who was signed for a bargain
$250,000, was equally lithe and athletic, as he has shown on
numerous occasions for Sri Lanka. Squeezing the ball between
these two was often as risky as piloting a course between Scylla
and Charibdis.

In the event, other players came to the fore too, not least
Sehwag’s opening partner and fellow local boy Gautam Gambhir.
If Sehwag scored lots of runs very quickly – his eye-watering
tournament strike-rate of 184 was highest of any batsman who
played more than five innings – than Gambhir scored even

more heavily. It did not matter that he couldn’t always live with
Sehwag’s phenomenal hitting. No one caressed more fours than
the 68 hit by Gambhir during the competition and his overall
tally of 534 runs was second only to the Australian Shaun Marsh,
who was representing Kings XI Punjab. Perhaps we shouldn’t
have been surprised: Gambhir had just scored 440 runs at an
average of 55 during India’s one-day series in Australia, and
his guile, versatility and sheer invention had been underlined
during India’s successful World Twenty20 campaign in South
Africa the previous September, when only Australia’s Matthew
Hayden outscored him. Gambhir began the DLF IPL as something
of a hidden treasure in the eyes of many Indian fans used to
worshipping at the altar of more household names, he ended up
with a justifiably enhanced profile. Even less expected was the
success of the 22-year-old Shikhar Dhawan, yet another local
boy, who batted at No. 3, scored an unbeaten half-century in his
side’s opening game against Rajasthan Royals and never looked
back. An undefeated 68 off 52 balls later in the tournament
against Deccan Chargers was a reminder of his potential. Look
out for his name in the future.

If there was a distinctly homegrown flavour to Delhi’s prolific top
order, their bowling had a foreign feel to it. Few seam bowlers
were more impressive than McGrath, now 38 but still the miserly
metronome who had made life so difficult for international
batsmen the world over during a 14-year Test career that had
brought him 563 wickets at an average of 21. Not until his 10th
game of the tournament did McGrath concede more than 30 runs

in his four-over stint, despite the fact that he always bowled at
least two of his overs during the first six overs of every game,

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