What's the perfect IPL team?

“Fortune favours the brave.” That’s a quote you’re most likely to hear from a person who believes that you can jump down from the top of Mount Everest and make it alive. We often associate the quote to the most absurd of situations and veil our anxieties by believing that fortune does indeed favour the brave. In sport, absurdity is not an uncommon occurrence. We’ve seen the best of teams fall to unexpected challengers, we’ve seen ridiculous opportunities taken as a result of equally ridiculous attempts, and we’ve seen Shahid Afridi take a bite of a ball. Absurdity is another word for something out of the blue, something unexpected, something unprecedented. And you’re brave if you chance upon it.

The notion of absurd hit me twice during this year’s IPL. Delhi Daredevils have always had a side stronger than their performances would suggest. Much like the Mumbai Indians, Delhi Daredevils have everything going for them. But when it comes to the big stage, they seamlessly choke, wither and die. In the five-year long journey the IPL has given us a ride through, the Daredevils have topped the group standings twice. They remain the only team to have achieved that remarkable feat. Yet, we see them scrambling and struggling, making themselves look like hapless beggars on a seething hot day, forcing us to tilt our head sideways and mutter piteous noises.

David Warner, like the rest of the DD team, hasn’t able to impact even a single game in the IPL so far

Another time the the word ‘absurd’ crosses my mind is when I read the Bangalore team sheet before every game. Here’s a team whose strength lies in three batsman; and in a sport which requires the conjugation of eleven professionals, this is perilously teetering on the cliff Mt. Self-Destruct. However, while RCB’s fortunes swing farther than any swinging carnival boat you’ll ever see, their position in the top four remains a constant. Risk is an action man decides to take against all expectations. Risk is dangerous, risk is even reckless, but risk ultimately is brave. And fortune loves it.

Much of the hoopla around Delhi’s lack of showing up is attributed to one man, namely Kevin Pietersen. Here’s a man who decidedly dislikes his name being spoken with fear in whispers, but rather enjoys it when screamed out on a microphone for the entire universe to hear. His absence has become a giant-shaped hole in the batting line-up, almost rendering numbers three, four and five on the scorecard obsolete. Pietersen was Daredevils’ third highest run-getter last season despite playing just eight matches, and got his 305 runs at a stunning strike-rate of 147.34.

Coming back to RCB.

RCB’s batting line-up has four batsman. Batsmen five through eleven, if given the opportunity, need to wag their tails long enough for the crowd to be happy. They have four specialist batsmen in their eleven, of which three are T20 legends. Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli and AB De Villiers can win any game from any situation on their own, let alone with the assistance of the other two. RCB, without the three, are an average team facing the prospect of a mundane life at the middle of the table, or even the splinter-ridden wooden spoon. But as any die-hard RCB fan will say, ‘but they ARE there’ while raising their eyebrows to frightening heights.

Let’s take RCB’s previous encounter against Delhi Daredevils. A down-and-out Daredevils side managed to muster 152 with modest contributions by all, but RCB were chasing down the equally modest total while dictating a lesson in class courtesy Kohli and De Villiers. And then the South African got out and all hell broke loose. The Daredevils could sniff their first win just around the corner, as the rest of the batting line-up fell swiftly, with each wicket coming a new set of theatrics on Kohli’s face. The match ended in a tie thanks to some power hitting by Ravi Rampaul and RCB won in the super over after a dreadful end to a wonderful over by Umesh Yadav.

Virat Kohli and AB De Villiersof RCB in action during the IPL T 20 match between Delhi Daredevils v/s RCB at Chinnaswamy Stadium,

Nine batsmen batted for RCB that night, and 152 runs were scored. The three stalwarts scored 117 of those. A further mind-numbing fact – they’ve hit 72.48% of RCB’s runs (669 out of 923) so far in the tournament.

The question of what team could win you the IPL is a very complex one. Logically, there must be a semblance of a balance between specialist batsmen, a couple of solid all-rounders, and a confident group of bowlers. Logically, an eleven comprising of these talents should win you any match against any team; but as I mentioned earlier, it’s the absurd that catches the eye and grabs a tight hold on the winnings.

RCB are building their entire season on the foundations built by these three batsmen. In fact, this foundation is so strong, it doesn’t really matter how feeble any structure above it is. As long as they have this foundation to fall back down on, RCB seem confident of continuing this way. It’s an audacious risk to take. It’s the exact thing the Indian national team did between 1997 and 2000 when Sachin Tendulkar usually had his head down at the non-striker’s end, exhausted from seeing his colleagues embarrass themselves in front of the world. But it is also the path most teams have chosen to follow.

In season one, Shane Warne led a group of over-achievers to the first ever IPL trophy. While it is beside the point that it was one of the ugliest things to grace the earth, it’s the little studded precious stones that made it such a sought-after possession. And that almost exactly represented the Royals. An ugly, weak team on paper, but there were little diamonds and rubies Warne extracted after much work, leading them to a magnificent victory. But a complete team effort? The batting was heavily dependent on Shane Watson and Yusuf Pathan, and Sohail Tanvir and Shane Warne together collected a bag full of wickets.

We’re constantly reminded that ‘the team with the strongest domestic players is the strongest’, but the more one sits through the tournament, the more the emphatic statement feels like a lousy lie. It takes one player to win the IPL and not much else, and RCB seem to have cracked that. If Kohli, Gayle, and De Villiers do happen to fail, RCB almost certainly will struggle to get a decent score on the board, but this is the risk they are willing to take and, so far, it’s worked like a charm.

Alternatively, this year, Rajasthan Royals have quietly made a confident start, winning four of their first five matches. The fact that they’ve won four games which have produced four different man-of-the-matches speaks volumes of the balance the team sits on. The Royals have done well since the first season but never reached the semi-finals since, which was expected seeing that they have the weakest team on paper; but countless hours of playing FIFA has hammered Andy Gray’s quips into my brain, ‘the game is not won on paper, Clyde’ and Rajasthan are a living, breathing example for Gray to cite. They are yet to play the giants in CSK and RCB, so only time will tell if this balance is of any use; for now they’re making the right moves, but it’s RCB who are making the right noises.

Ultimately, it seems as though you need just one player through the run of the tournament to perform and you’ve done your job. Twenty overs is too less a time to have a long batting line-up like in the Test matches and allow batsman after batsman to come in and contribute. By stacking up on bowlers, teams may have the privilege of falling back on multiple specialists, but being dependent on a few batsmen to take you over the line could be the perfect recipe Gordon Ramsay will be howling about for years on end.

CSK – the perfect IPL side

But I will end this piece on that one bright yellow note known as the Chennai Super Kings. They’ve hit the balance quotient a la Rajasthan, but done so with prolific players who very well could take their match on their own, which is why they’ve been champions twice. They have batsman who can win you matches on their own, but they are not dependent on them. Being dependent on anybody, your parents will say, will land you in a hurricane of debt. There is, thankfully, no system of debt on a cricket field, but the results are equally frightening. An embarrassing loss could damage the team’s confidence, reputation and ego, three things hugely important in the IPL, after the Pepsi fan box of course (which looks like the lips of a woman who’s kissed rainbows all her life).

Absurdity is the name of the game, risks are part of it. But you need thought and intelligence behind the risks, something the IPL characteristically lacks.