CSK Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and SRH Captain Kane Williamson address the media after the photo-call with the Vivo IPL trophy 2018 in Mumbai. Express photo by Kevin DSouza, Mumbai 26-05-2018.
If you were anywhere near the Chepauk Stadium on Saturday morning, you could have been mistaken into thinking that Chennai Super Kings have already won the IPL. For, a hundred or so of CSK fans had gathered at the centre of their original home ground on the eve of the final to pass on their wishes and perhaps also for a premature celebration.
A bunch of them stood around donning Chennai jerseys and holding yellow flags. A group of women decked in canary yellow sarees struck Bharatnatyam poses. A slightly more exuberant lot broke into dapamkuthu steps. Not too far away, an artist was busy preparing a poignant sketch of MS Dhoni. And Dhoni was present, too, in the form of a life-size cut-out, with his hands under his chin, observing the proceedings. In fact, even the official broadcasters had packed off one of their Tamil commentators to Chennai on a one-day mission to shoot a vignette in case the two-time former champions do end up adding a third title to their bag on Sunday.
Dress rehearsal
Meanwhile, at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Sunrisers Hyderabad were being announced as the new IPL champions with Michael Slater’s voice echoing around the stadium about how Kane Williamson had come in to the tournament not knowing he would be captain and how he’d shaped a young team into a winning one. It wasn’t some bizarre and biased foretelling of what was about to occur a day later. It was simply part of the elaborate dress rehearsal that was being carried out at Wankhede for the grand post-match presentation ceremony on Sunday. Slater of course will be talking up Chennai and Dhoni’s return to captaincy later tonight if CSK lift the trophy once more.
The mood around the venue for IPL XI’s final was expectedly frantic as organizers rushed around either taking positions on the dias to give away mock prizes or just adding the finishing touches in preparation for Indian cricket’s glitziest night of the year.
That all concerned seem to be preparing for either eventuality, perhaps, is also a sign of how closely the two finalists have matched up throughout. Though Chennai may have beaten Hyderabad in all three previous encounters this season, the two teams spent most of the league stages trading the top spot. Their CSK misadventures aside, Sunrisers only lost 3 of their other 12 matches and were the first team to cruise into the playoff stages. Their bowling’s been watertight enough to stave off pretty much all comers, and it’s only Chennai who’ve found ways to overcome it. The margin on each occasion has been narrow enough for there to be no clear favourites going into the final.
The principal players of the big match, meanwhile, indulged in some witty banter during a press conference that saw both captains and coaches talk up the competitiveness between their teams. When the two captains were asked about the continued dominance of leg-spin in T20 cricket, Dhoni asked Williamson to answer first since “his team had the best leg-spinner in the tournament”. Later, CSK coach Stephen Fleming quipped about how he’s hoping, if not expecting, Rashid Khan to not have a “huge impact” on Sunday.
The Rashid factor
“The exciting part of this tournament is that one player can shift a game as one player did for Sunrisers last night, he had a huge impact. So fortunately he won’t probably be able to do it tomorrow because having to do it twice in a row is tough,” he said, as Williamson and coach Tom Moody sat sporting wry smiles on the other side of the table. When Dhoni indulged in some satire talking about the many bikes and cars he owns and how he doesn’t ride “all at a time” in response to a query about not bowling Harbhajan Singh in the last game; Williamson curiously inquired just how many cars his counterpart owned. “More bikes than cars,” Dhoni told him.
In the end, it might come down to temperament and who can hold their nerve more. CSK is certainly blessed in that context. For a team that has been pulled up repeatedly for the “senior citizen” feel to their roster from the time of the auction, they have just the kind of players needed to win finals — those who have played in lots of them and those who have won lots of them.
Though Dhoni didn’t want to read too much into it, Fleming did allude to the fact that it’ll come down to a special individual performance — like it did in the qualifier where Faf du Plessis made the difference. “I guess teams win competitions while individuals can win finals so we’re game for that match-winning performance and it’s going to have to come because the opposition is very good,” he said. And whichever team it comes from, India seems to be ready for both.
Live on Star Sports 1 — 7 pm