IPL - Players review

With the Rajasthan Royals capping their impressive run in the IPL Twenty20 cricket tournament with a thrilling last ball victory against the Chennai Super Kings in the finals on Sunday, it is time to look back and analyze the performance of the players involved.

Icons and Superstars
Among the icons and superstars of Indian Cricket (Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman, Sehwag, Yuvraj, Dhoni, Kumble, Harbhajan, Zaheer) only Dhoni and Sehwag had any real impact in the tournament. Dhoni impressively led his team to the finals while also scoring over 400 runs with an average of over 40. Sehwag's 400 runs and his consistent opening partnership with Gambhir went a long way in taking Delhi to the semis.

As for the other batsmen, Laxman and Tendulkar missed most of the matches to injury; Yuvraj could not live up to his big hitting expectations; though Dravid topped his team's batting statistics, he could not really motivate or inspire his team mates; Ganguly played a couple of incredible knocks, but they were just too little and too late.

Among the bowlers, none left a mark, except Harbhajan's slap on Sreesanth's cheeks!

Former Stars
None of the former stars (Kaif, Agarkar, A Nehra, L Balaji, Parthiv Patel) performed well enough to get noticed, though it is heartening to note that both Balaji and Nehra have both recovered from injury.

Twenty20 Champs
Some of the new generation Twenty20 cricketers - Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Robin Uthappa, Venugopal Rao, Irfan Pathan, Sreesanth, Piyush Chawla - performed consistently well and enhanced their reputation as the future stars.

The rest - Munaf Patel, P Kumar, VRV Singh, Joginder Sharma, Ishant Sharma, Dinesh Karthik, Wasim Jaffer - seemed to have lost their mojo. Ishant Sharma in particular was disappointing considering the high price that Kolkata paid to get him and Dinesh Karthik missed an opportunity to get back in to the selectors radar.

Foreign Recruits
Most of the big names in international cricket - Shaun Marsh, Shane Watson, Jayasuriya, Sohail Tanvir, Shane Warne, Graeme Smith, Sangakkara, McGrath, Maharoof, Ntini, Albie Morkel, Adam Gilchrist, Mike Hussey, Hayden, McCullum - were spectacular. Especially Marsh and Watson, who emerged as the two best performers in the IPL.

Pollock, Muralitharan, David Hussey, JR Hopes, Stephen Fleming, Jayawardene, Bravo and Umar Gul did not exactly set the stage on fire, but had a few good performances.

Mark Boucher, Kallis, Salman Butt, Gibbs, Symonds, Kamran Akmal, Ponting, Cameron White, Akhtar, Vaas, Asif, Chanderpaul, Shoaib Malik, Afridi, Fernando and Steyn were abject disappointments.

Emerging Talent
This was an ideal opportunity for some of the local boys to showcase their talent and a few - Manpreet Gony, S Dhawan, SA Asnodkar, Goswami - managed to shine through, but none better than Yusuf Pathan who had a wonderful tournament capped by a man of the match performance in the final.

Overall, the Foreign Recruits ensured the high quality of cricket throughout the tournament and played a huge part in making the IPL a success. The biggest disappointment has to be the performance or rather the non-performance of the Icons and Superstars of Indian Cricket.