A champion of sorts.. (part 2)

I had great intentions of writing a follow up to my Champions League post. I originally intended it to be about Chennai Super Kings and how I thought they were shoe-ins to take out this year's tournament. Unfortunately, it doesn't come across as quite such a revelation when that same team has already swept all before them and won the aforementioned tournament. My second idea was to write a piece stating all the reasons why the Super Kings were the deserving victors, however Cricinfo beat me to the punch with their fantastic statistical analysis:

http://www.cricinfo.com/t20champions2010/content/current/story/478867.html

So, I am reduced to my plan C, which is simply to say that despite my earlier observations about luck and Twenty20, Chennai have all the makings of a champion team in this format.

A champion of sorts.. (part 1)

The Champions League Twenty20 seems a strange tournament to me. Actually, the idea of crowning any one team in the game's shortest format at all seems slightly bizarre. My reason for saying this is that when cricket is boiled down to only twenty overs a side, fortune, as much as skill, plays a big part in deciding the outcome. It is a big assertion, I know, but I get the feeling that on his day, any batsman could score runs in Twenty20. It becomes a Law of Averages situation where even the most modest of cricketers is bound to strike it lucky at some point or other. And, as they say, fortune favours the brave (something T20 batsmen generally have in spades.) 

I think this rule applies to teams as well as individuals. Given relatively equal talent on both sides, a T20 match does not necessarily come down to which team is the more skillful, but to which team has the most assistance from Lady Luck. This is why the IPL in its three seasons so far has seen three different names engraved on the trophy. This is also why Deccan Chargers and Royal Challenge Bangalore eventually played out the final in 2009, despite the fact that Chennai Superkings and Delhi Daredevils were the more dominant teams over the course of the tournament. It is also why last years Champions League finalists, New South Wales and Trinidad and Tobago are not back competing in the tournament this year. Both sides, as talented as they are, could not even win their respective domestic competitions this time around. In fact, this year’s edition sees only Bangalore and Sri Lanka’s Wayamba backing up from 2009. 

T20, as you can see, is a fickle beast. The same side that scored 200-plus one week can be bowled out for less than a hundred the next. Of course, this can occur in all forms of cricket, but hardly to such an extreme and rarely with such frequency. This is why the Champions League title is slightly ridiculous. Is the title-holder the best domestic side on the planet? No. Is it the luckiest? Quite probably. 

(to be continued…)