Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab were on top of the league tables. Punjab just had the best skill sets- largely due to Shaun Marsh's magical entry into world cricket along with many other stars
However, it was Rajasthan Royals and Mumbai Indians who sorted teams out during bowling, to get decisive results in their favor. This is not surprising since Warne is a bowler renowned for his prowess as a bowler to work out batsmen and Tendulkar is one of the most astute bastmen-bowler, who works out batsmen based on his own vast experience of pitch limitations, and most of all batting intent of different batsmen.
In this part let us see some of Rajasthan's methods:
Rajasthan Royals- briiliant all round bowling department, with Tanveer and Warne as tactical options
Shane Warne did a wonderful job of unleashing natural skills of his young and inexperienced players and at the same time sorted players and created situations with briiliant -off the board- plans. Being a legendary leg spinner, he came with some compellling field positions with weird gaps (tactical hit-me-if-you-can and sharp positional gambits). He played it like blitz chess, active and changing all the time- often bowling a bowler for just an over or changing the field from orthodox with slips and then the next over with no slips. And his pace bowlers used the short ball effectively, because Indian batters can be predictable. Of course Tanvir was that crazy knight on the move- yorking and shooting balls at different paces from weird angles.
Shane usually achieved his results and it was no wonder, that with Graeme Smith a reliable anchor since game 2, things fell in place in the first half of the league. I will cover his two-run gambit field placing in my next Dot Chess, hopefully. Warne was in his peak ripping form in the semis in Mumbai, with his leggies bouncing and turning sharply- impossible to hit with conviction.
Shane Watson also came up with short balls in the slog overs, which was a different approach for the subcontinent- but it did work as many batters lower down pull poorly or just hang the bat to run it down to third man. So a short ball and fielder on the fance almost behind the keeper and first slip might work? Sure it did (expcept once when Takawale got them squarer).
Also important to remember, is that Shane Warne actually got one of the few wickets of the IPL- beating the batsman in defence- when got Dhoni caught in the slips. Can we see a graphic of how wickets went down when a batsman was not looking to score? Perhaps just a handful, if at all- but this was a beauty for sure.
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