Chennia Superkings v Rajastan Royals

I've now had the chance to watch a match in the Indian Premier League, which was shown on Setanta2 this afternoon, and it wasn't a lot different to what I expected.

I expected it to be pretty commercial and it is. They've taken every opportunity to plaster sponsorship advertising everywhere and it's now apparent exactly where the inspiration for all this has come from - America. Particularly, American Football and Baseball - the format is exactly the same - including cheer leaders! I've now sat through 6 Specsavers advertisements - shame I don't need glasses.

The good news is that the standard of cricket being played is high - as you'd expect from some of the big names playing. I particularly enjoyed the battle, more of a rout really between Dhoni and Warne. I don't think Dhoni had faced Warne before and it showed - it was like a tiger tormenting and playing with a cornered mouse. Dhoni seemed clueless as to how to deal with Warne and it only took him about 5 deliveries to take his wicket. I also had the pleasure of watching Tanvir take 6-14, the best bowling figures so far in T20.

Tanvir showed that T20 is not a batsmans slogfest if you bowl accurately and intelligently mixing up your deliveries. If you bowl length at the same pace about a foot outside off stump - you will go for a lot of runs. Five out of Tanvirs six wickets would have hit the stumps, 3 bowled and 2 LBW's and therein lies the secret of T20 bowling - mix up your pace and length and hit the stumps and you will take wickets - you miss, I hit.

I dislike the DLF IPL logo and branding intensely. It's not been properly thought out and is under-developed, awkard, ugly and not impllemented consistently. God only knows what the DLF part is or the stupid traingle that goes with it, no doubt it has some meaning to people in India.

The commetary on the whole is poor, there's a few exceptions, but not many. Pommie Mbangwa should NOT be a commentator - he does not have sufficient depth of knowledge nor does he accurately portray what actually happens. One shot he claimed came off the top edge, actually came off the middle of the bat but lower toe. The general poor level of commentary is pretty consistent with the more 'light hearted' nature of this format of the game, which is why poor commentators like Pommie Mbangwa can get away with their general lack of knowledge.

As an aside, I looked up the prices of Surreys 50 over game against Kent at the Oval tommorow and was amazed to see that their T20 matches were more expensive than their 50 over games. So let me get this right, I have to play more for a 40 over game that's over in 3 hours than I do for a 100 over game that will take all day?

I've been saying that for a while- the batsmen constantly attacking the bowlers forces the bowlers to bowl more accurately and in more consistent areas, and these skills will transfer themselves to the other forms of the game. Is it a coincidence that all these good up-and-coming bowlers have emerged since the introduction of T20?

I haven't watched any of the games (I'm not staying up 'till 12:30) but based on cricket I've seen in South Africa, I think Mbangwa's a pretty reasonable commentator. He's always very coherent and fairly lively, and really anyone can make the sort of mistake you're describing- it's just a matter of optics, I suppose. I've seen commentators- good ones- completely ignore when the ball's swung when a wicket's been taken.

Scott, I have to agree with you on certain extent about the poor commentary
though i don't have much problem with Pommie's comments but i do hate to listen to the biased boring irritating voice of sunil gavaskar
For fun we have got aamir sohail with explosive comments sometime even to the extent of fighting(literally speaking) with his co-commentator(ian bishop for example on T20 being bowlers game?)
Not to forget my favt of all windies wikipedia Tony Cozier
Overall Commentary its just about okay(not the best like we had during cb series-Channel 9 Team)

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Heat Sucks-Red Death

Such is the nature of T20 - there's no place to hide as there is in the 4 or 5 day game and to a lesser extent the 50 over format. If you bowl a bad ball, or even a length ball in T20 it's likely to disappear over the ropes - there's no margin for error at all.

I view this as a good thing, not a bad thing and as you rightly point out, this increased discipline will find it's way into the other game formats and hopefully in time increase the overall standard of bowling in international cricket.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this point - Mbangwa is a lighweight commentator that adds little to no 'added value' over and above what's being shown on the screen, and even then he doesn't always get that bit right!

I suppose I've been spoilt by the general high quality of the Sky commentators, every one of which would run rings around Mbangwa in their depth of knowledge of the game and that even includes Charles Colville! Bring in the likes of Hussain, Lloyd, Gower, Holding and to a lesser extent Botham, Willis and Allot and there's little to no comparison.

I expect any cricket commentator worth listening to, to add more understanding of what's going on than I have myself and that is not the case with Mbangwa.

The problem with the "discipline" introduced by Twenty20 bowling is that the objective is so negative. Forget pitched up bowling that is trying to tempt the reluctant batsman into playing a ball that he should really be leaving. Forget, on a faster pitch, the subtleties of trying to get the batsman caught in two minds between playing forwards or back. Forget, in short, the aim of trying to command respect.

In an era dominated by negative, back of a length bowling that's intended to cramp a batsman for room, Twenty20 encourages even worse traits. The supreme virtue of consistency is forsaken in favour of excessive variations, with the dreaded bouncer and even less meritworthy yorker finding a prominence that should never be echoed in Test cricket.

The emphasis on increasing the risk for the batsman who is playing through the line adds futher problems. Pace and bounce end up over-valued, as does extreme turn. Variations of pace also get over-emphasised, and where spin bowling should revolve around trying to tempt batsmen into going hard at balls that are not there to be hit, the Twenty20 format (and especially the short boundaries) leads to the bowler being more concerned with NOT getting hit.

What use are variations of pace at the highest levels of Test cricket? If the batsman is lingering on the back foot and looking to play the ball late (as all great batsmen should be), the odds of any such variations causing problems are minimal. Same with bouncers, yorkers and so on. These deliveries should only pay major dividends when the batsman has given up on Test cricket and is looking to get after the bowling.

The only major virtue I see in Twenty20 is the pressure to get on with the game: captaincy might well improve due to the time constraints, and bowlers might finally start cutting excessive run-ups (and their tendency to try tinkering with fields between deliveries).

As for the "quality" side of things... Cricinfo - Why the IPL should fail

Rachael, I don't really understand why you're complaining here that you prefer the 'more intense' examination of 4 or 5 day cricket to T20, because that's essentially what you're doing. That's your prerogative of course to prefer that, and I and many others think in a similar way, but we need to remember here that T20 and Test Cricket are two totally different formats of the game and what works in one clearly isn't going to work in the other and vice versa.

The two different formats require two different disciplines and the point that Aurelius and myself were making is that bowling accuracy is just as important in T20 as it is in the other Cricket formats and equally important in Test Cricket.

Why was Glenn McGrath so successful and one of the, if not the best fast bowler of his generation in all formats of the game? Was he particulary quick? No. Did he move the ball prodigiously in both directions with either seam or swing? No. Did he bowl with excessive variations? No. So what was his secret? Accuracy and consistency - something woefully lacking from the majority of todays Test fast bowlers.

If you have the ability to consistently put a cricket ball exactly where you want to put it, you will take wickets regardless of the format you play in, from Test Cricket right down to schoolboy cricket, particularly if batsmen are trying to score runs off you.

That's the point I think you've missed.

Bowling consistency for you seems to be the ability to put the ball into the same place ball after ball and over after over. For me it means the ability of putting the ball where the bowler wants it to go. In T20, if you put the ball in the same place ball after ball and over after over the same ball will disappear out of the ground in the same place ball after ball, over after over, not exactly what's required eh?

Whilst I'd tend to agree that bouncers are over-used in Test Cricket, I disagree about yorkers - I think they're under-used in Test Cricket - I'd like to see the England bowlers bowling more yorkers than they do. As for having no place in Test Cricket, we'll simply have to agree to disagree.

Um, deception? Something I'd have thought you would have understood by now. Variations of pace are useless if you don't have the control, accuracy and consistency to go with them. That's primarily why poor slower balls go for 4 and quite often good, well disguised slower balls get chipped to mid on or mid off.

Any bowling variation, bouncers, yorkers, slower balls, cutters, arm balls etc will only ever be effective if they're accurate and executed correctly, so often in Test Cricket they're not and that's perhaps where the discipline of T20 might help things in Test Cricket.

That's precisely why Test bowlers use bouncers so much, to get those batsmen off the safety of their back foot and onto their front foot, where they can bowl more threatening deliveries. Those same bouncers you criticised earlier as having no place in Test Cricket!

The mind boggles.

The mind boggles even more!

Well like you, I'd prefer to watch a days Test Cricket to a T20 game or an ODI, but that's just my personal preference - I enjoy all Cricket formats. T20 is here to stay regardless of what any of us might want or prefer and like it or not, influences from T20 will find their way into other formats of the game.

Increased accuracy will be one of them, without the myriad of different variations required in T20, as these are simply not required in Test Cricket - but accuracy most certainly is and is one of the things that Englands own bowlers need to embrace. With the exception of Sidebottom, Panesar and perhaps Flintoff, Englands bowlers are poor at bowling accurately and I for one am tired of seeing a new innings started by the opposition and neither of their two opening batsmen having to lay bat on ball for several overs!

We can't just wave away T20 as being irrelevant, it's the new Cricket order and influences from it will find their way into other Cricklet formats and some of them need to be embraced and not ignored.

As I said in my original post, I can only comment on the one game I saw - and that game represented a reasonable contest between bat and ball and the low scores of that game were testament to that.

As I also mentioned in my original post, I don't 'buy into' the view that T20 is a slogfest for the batsmen - as long as bowlers bowl accurately. There's the rub.

If the bowlers bowl poorly then of course it will be slogfest, as it would be in any other format of the game if the bowlers bowl poorly - T20 is no different.

Tanvirs 6-14 does not suggest to me that it's a batsmans game, does it to you?

The only way batsmen will prosper in T20 is if the bowlers let them and sadly there's an awful lot of poor bowlers around and that's precisely why people think T20 is a batsmans game.

C'mon. Waqar Younis and Ray Lindwall are famous exponents of the yorker- It seems to me that they made that ball pay rather large dividends. Tony Greig said that the best ball he ever recieved was a yorker from Lillee. If a yorker is a really good one, there's very little the batsman can do, regardless of how late they play the ball. Same with the well-directed bouncer, which is a very effective "shock" ball. You don't have to be a bad batsman to get out to these sorts of deliveries.

On another note, it's really gratifying to see how much Ponting struggled. Average of 9, highest score of 20- you earning that measly $400k, Punter? On the other hand it's good to see Shaun Marsh suceeding- I don't think it'll be long before he makes his international debut in the T20 format.

I think one of the biggest plus of ipl is the youngsters we have seen. Marsh has been amazing and so has been manpreet goni, watson, dhawan and co. We have seen some players that we would not have seen if not for the ipl.

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"They look like a team destined to win the world cup"......
Ian Chappel during Ind v SA in the World Cup 20-20