The defense spree to fringe dominance - Themes from the third week of IPL 2022

The 2022 season of the Indian Premier League has reached a fever pitch. It is not the business end yet but all sides have played almost half their league matches to give a clearer picture of where the tournament is heading. We have seen some last-minute turn-around in fortunes with many laggards finally picking up the pace to make the tournament even spicier. Add to that KKR suddenly being baffled by their own doing, you know we have truly arrived at the biggest league in the world.

The third week of the IPL provided many subplots to explore but few trends were unmissable in a way. Let’s explore how the third week has set things up for another week of breath-taking cricket and what can we expect from the next set of matches.

Batting first is not really a bad option

You don’t see this happen that often in the IPL. So far in the tournament, not a single toss-winning skipper has decided to go against the popular convention and bat first, keeping the dew factor in mind, the results, however, have become increasingly difficult to ascertain. In the first 10 games of the IPL, chasing teams won 70% of the games but those numbers have come down to 60% and 44.44% in the next set of 10 and 9 matches respectively. 

While Rajasthan Royals have mastered the art of defending the total, a derivative of how they have approached their bowling in the tournament, others have caught up big-time in the last week. Even Chennai Super Kings, considerably handicapped by the absence of Deepak Chahar, had Gujarat Titans under the mat during the run-chase and it took freakish innings from Rashid Khan to change the narrative. Are we going to see a lot more of the same in the coming week? The pattern clearly says so. 

Released players doing well

The mega auction provided an opportunity for the existing eight teams in the IPL to carefully plot their force for the next three years and ensure that they have a core ready to take the mantle down. On the surface before the auction, it seemed the teams made very good choices of players but certainly, the first 29 games of the season have been anything but that. On the other hand, the released players, who ended up at other franchises, have done certainly well for their new teams this season.

Be it Yuzvendra Chahal, Trent Boult taking the season by its horns for Rajasthan Royals to Kuldeep Yadav being a contender for purple cap. Be it Dinesh Karthik emerging as the finest finisher in the season to Shubman Gill evolving his game to another level, their formative teams have been left hung and dry or to be at the receiving end of their scathing. If the retained players not performing well is a problem, them seeing their judgment crashing down on a short-term basis adds insult to injury. 

Fringe Indian batters coming to the fore

Another pattern that was quite visible in the last week was the way the fringe Indian players ruled the roost, leaving the main stars far behind in terms of impact. Whereas the T20 regulars like Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ishan Kishan, Rishabh Pant, and Shreyas Iyer have struggled to get the barrel going, the likes of Prithvi Shaw, Rahul Tripathi, Deepak Hooda, Shivam Dube, and Dinesh Karthik have been exceptional. Probably, you can single out just KL Rahul and Suryakumar Yadav among the core group of batters to have done well this season.

While the new stars’ performance will keep the Indian team management interested, they will be really worried about the already-existing set-up and their performance. It would not be easy to dismiss Rishabh Pant for Dinesh Karthik despite the former not being able to stitch together a couple of good innings. Rohit is the T20I captain and Kohli is still an undroppable entity. That leaves the discourse there alone, but the Indian team management and selectors will be eagerly waiting for the front-runners to turn it around sooner than later.